US trade group the Natural Products Association has stepped up its criticism of the Food and Drug Administration over its failure to date to set out clear safety standards for CBD products.
As New Jersey this week joined other states proposing CGD regulations ‘to fill the FDA vacuum”, NPA director for government Affairs, Kyle Turk, said: “This is a federal regulatory issue, FDA needs to do its job, and they need to do it now. While it is good that more states realize the public health risk of completely unregulated products in the marketplace, further delay by FDA is not good for public health or for the CBD industry, because the best approach is one uniform national standard based on sound science that is enforceable.”
The NPA has been pressing the FDA to regulate CBD since 2017, has testified on a number of occasions, and has held several meetings with top FDA officials on the issue. NPA also contributed to the developing of legislation passed by the US House of Representatives that provides resources so the FDA can perform a Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) and set a safe level of CBD for consumers to use each day.
The process, the NPA argues, would follow the same precedent as red yeast rice in the US, which allows a natural product to contain a level of a drug ingredient that the FDA has determined to be safe. With the exception of Epidiolex, all CBD products in the US are considered illegal by the federal government, despite the fact that hundreds of products remain on the market.