Posts Tagged ‘Association for the Cannabinoid Industry’
Courage and Cannabidiol
The story of how brave British small-businesses created a £1.7 billion market and now face destruction at the hands of the overbearing Food Standards Agency and its big business sponsors.
Hundreds of people who set up small businesses selling CBD products face the looming deadline of 31st March 2021 that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has imposed for its ‘novel foods’ regulations to come into force.
These people, the essence of the British entrepreneurial spirit, are being crushed by misguided over-regulation that is not based on any evidence and which will gift the market to big business while removing from shelves the products which millions of people have gained great benefit from.
The FSA has not consulted with the industry in any meaningful fashion and is imposing draconian new rules which even at this late stage remain unclear, confusing and require enormous, unnecessary and wasteful expenditure in pointless bureaucracy.
To be clear, if you are one of those millions who discovered that CBD could help with anxiety, pain, insomnia and or a host of other conditions, the products you rely on may not be available much longer. But there is a way through this. Read to the end of this article to find how you will still be able to access the ‘real CBD’ that you need.
The most important thing to understand is that there is no evidence anywhere in the world that anyone has ever come to any real harm from using CBD products. Despite this, the FSA is forcing businesses to put their products through an incredibly complex series of tests which cost a huge amount of money, in some instances hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Even the smallest companies are having to submit a dossiers on individual products which cost around £5000 each to produce. Imagine how many bottles of CBD oil a small shop or website has to sell to pay for just one of these. And they are completely pointless. There is no need for them at all. The FSA has just invented them and it’s nothing to do with public safety because there is no danger from any of the products concerned.
The Association for the Cannabinoid Industry
What this is really about is that big business missed out on the CBD boom. They turned their corporate noses up at it, didn’t want to get involved because of the stigma and prejudice associated with anything to do with cannabis. Then, within the space of a few years, they found that all their big customers, the multiples, were starting to stock CBD and it was selling very well indeed. So much so that the value of CBD sold in Britain is now more than the value of all vitamin C and vitamin D products combined. It’s a huge market with estimates of its size ranging from £300 million to £1.7 billion per year (New Frontier Data).
So big business is now calling the shots. A sinister organisation, the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry (ACI), run by a man, Steve Moore, with connections to the sleaziest end of the Conservative Party, is supporting the FSA in this scheme and his aim is simply to price small businesses out of the market and hijack it for his big business friends. Never has a bigger confidence trick been pulled on consumers. The small businesses that created the CBD market had established trade associations from within their own ranks which charged a few hundred pounds for membership and did an excellent job of representing the industry. The ACI demands membership fees of £25,000 per year, pricing out the small businesses and using its funding to bully and intimidate any business that doesn’t want to sign up.
Steve Moore of the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry
There are problems in the CBD market that need addressing. It does need better regulation. There are disreputable businesses selling products that are not what they claim. They don’t have the amount of CBD in them that is advertised and they are certainly not medicines which can treat cancer, diabetes, depression and serious illnesses. But these problems are already covered by existing laws. The problem is they are simply not being enforced. The regulators who should be acting against these rogue companies include the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and Trading Standards. Despite reputable CBD businesses delivering hundreds of reports about rogue suppliers, virtually nothing has been done. To be fair the MHRA and Trading Standards just don’t have the resources to carry out this work, so the idea of giving them even more work, with incredibly complex regulations to enforce, is just barmy. It makes no sense.
The Human Medicines Regulations 2012
Even our largest newspaper publishers have been allowed to get away with breaching the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 which prevent anyone from making a commercial gain out of claiming medicinal benefit for a product which is not a licensed medicine. This criminal offence can result in a two year prison sentence, yet the Daily Mail runs such ads every day. So do most of the tabloids and those newspapers that like to call themseleves ‘quality’, do something equally illegal. They run advertorials or sponsored reviews of products which if you click and buy pay the publishers commission.
These crimes have been reported to the MHRA and to the ASA but they have done nothing about it and the illegal advertising continues to this day. As for the confidence trickster companies making these illegal medicinal claims, nothing has been done about them either and they continue to scam people with cancer cures and miracle medicines. Now the ACI is using this conduct as part of the justification for their ‘novel foods’ scam. Of course the two issues are completely unrelated.
But all is not lost. Undoubtedly, the ‘real CBD’, the whole plant extract, containing all the goodness and nourishment extracted from low-THC cannabis plants, will be taken off the shelves of the multiples but there will be a flourishing ‘grey’ market, mainly online and there will be nothing that the FSA, ACI or their enforcers will be able to do about it.
The FSA’s understanding of CBD and cannabis is virtually non-existent. The original CBD trade associations spent years trying to educate FSA’s people and urging them to co-operate on appropriate regulation but they didn’t want to know. Now the FSA has chosen to listen to its own and ACI’s ‘experts’ who are trained and indoctrinated in the prohibition mindset. Consequently its statements and rulings on its new regulations are so poorly drafted that they leave a gaping hole for the brave, pioneering businesses that created this market. A genuine, whole plant oil that preserves the natural proportions of the compounds in the hemp plants from which it is extracted is molecularly identical to those plants and hemp is specifically excluded from novel foods regulations.
So ‘whole plant’ is what you must look for if you want ‘real CBD’, the product that so many people benefit from. The ACI and FSA are pushing nasty, ineffective isolates and synthetics that are useless in comparison and require far higher doses to achieve the same results as a few drops of whole plant oil.
One More Problem as the Home Office Steps In on THC Levels
CBD originally took off because more and more people were becoming aware of the medicinal benefits of cannabis. CBD was seen as a way to enjoy some of these benefits legally and without getting ‘high’ from the THC in cannabis. But CBD was always a euphemism to avoid the stigma around cannabis and to reassure people they weren’t buying something illegal. In fact, whole plant CBD products are low-THC cannabis oil. Under a provision of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations, a trace amount of 1mg of THC per bottle of CBD oil has been allowed. It’s far too little to get anyone high. You’d have to drink about three bottles in one go before you felt anything.
But surprise, surprise, now the Home Office has started to get involved too. Again, without a shred of evidence of any harm, it is considering reducing this limit very substantially.
Why?
Undoubtedly this is co-ordinated with the FSA and the ACI. The aim is the same, to destroy the small businesses that created this market, to ramp up the costs of selling CBD so high that only big business can afford it and to prohibit the sale of the whole plant, low-THC cannabis oil that is so valuable for so many people. And there is no credible evidence to support any of it, except what the FSA has cooked up to support its pre-determined conclusion. There is no evidence that the trace amounts of THC in whole plant oil have or could cause anyone any harm and it is all part of the same scam.
So remember, if you want ‘real CBD’, you’re going to have to go online. Look for those courageous businesses that provide whole plant extracts and avoid isolate or synthetic products which are a waste of money.
As the Best of Britain Dies, the Evil Spectre of Anslinger Rises in Steve Moore, Government Stool Pigeon and Traitor to the Cause.
Harry Anslinger. Steve Moore.
They say bad news comes in threes and this morning we were greeted with the appalling news of another ignorance-based clampdown by the Home Office on CBD products. Then, shortly after lunch, we heard that the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry (ACI) which has been collaborating with the Food Standards Agency to destroy all the small businesses that created the CBD market, has gone into partnership with Trading Standards. It will train Trading Standards officers to assist them with enforcement action against the small businesses which compete with ACI’s big business clients. These small businesses sell ‘real’ CBD, genuine whole plant extracts, while ACI is bulldozing regulators towards nasty, ineffective, isolate and synthetic-based products.
Finally we hear the terrible but not unexpected news that Captain Sir Tom Moore has succumbed to pneumonia, exacerbated by Covid-19.
RIP Captain Sir Tom Moore
Where Captain Sir Tom Moore represented the very best of British and was a symbol of hope and endurance for us all, the gone-to-seed figure of Steve Moore, head of the ACI, is the very opposite. What cruel irony that they share the same surname! When Paul Birch, the multimillionaire stoner, gave Steve Moore the funding he needed to launch his Big Pharma-inspired assault on the British cannabis market, he cannot have realised that he was unleashing a tyrannical, bullying monster, almost the reincarnation of Harry Anslinger, the evil force behind ‘reefer madness’ and the father of the war on drugs. The Birch-Moore cartel now has its tentacles into every aspect of the British cannabis market and is eyeing Europe as its next target. We must see that our neighbours are warned. A tie up with the EU bureaucracy would be exactly in line with Moore’s modus operandi.
Birch, who is known to suffer psychotic episodes, once resulting in an intervention from anti-cannabis advocate Lord Monson, provided Moore with the cash to buy up a long list of highly qualified scientists, lawyers and PR consultants. They have taken his thirty pieces of silver and set about the systematic destruction of the wonderful story of British enterprise and innovation that led the world in CBD products. The contrast between the great Captain Tom and the ignoble, self-serving Moore could not be greater. The coronavirus has taken so much from us and only an individual tied to the sleaziest end of the Conservative Party could exploit it and turn it to his own disgusting advantage.
We should not lose heart though because now the enemy has revealed himself in all his sordid reality. Across the Atlantic, a new, decent administration is about to decriminalise cannabis federally. Moore’s advantage will be shortlived. The prohibitionists in the Home Office and British establishment will shortly be trounced by market forces that are more powerful even than their dead hand, with resources that far exceed anything that Birch and Moore can muster.
It may be a few years yet but the immense benefits of real cannabis which for few short years as ‘real’ CBD have helped so many people in Britain will return. When the day comes for Birch, Moore and their Gestapo of assistants to meet their maker, they will not do so with the honour and righteousness of Captain Tom but with a squalid record of ignominy and disgrace.
An Update On CBD, the Novel Food Scam and the Fatcats Who Plan to Take Over the Market.
The CBD Market Has Been Built By Small British Businesses.
It is About To Be Stolen By Government-Backed Big Business.
Over about the last five years, small British businesses have built the CBD market from zero to hundreds of millions in annual sales. It’s been driven by rapidly changing attitudes towards cannabis and a realisation that many of its medicinal benefits could be available legally by using traditional hemp extracts.
Big business, the established supplement and health food companies weren’t interested. They saw the stigma around cannabis before they saw the changing attitudes.
Now it’s all very different. Millions of people are using CBD. All the big multiples are stocking it. It’s become a media fascination and many people say they gain great benefit from it. Suddenly, big business and all the regulators are interested. Suddenly those who weren’t bothered previously are cautioning about all sorts of dangers and concerns. They don’t actually have any evidence of CBD products causing any harm but clearly they don’t think these small, independent businesses can be trusted anymore. Of course, the truth is they want a slice of the action – or preferably all of the action if they can get their chums in government and the bureaucracy to step in and assist with their plans.
In fact the British CBD industry has been a model of responsible self-regulation. Two trade associations, the CTA and CannaPro, represent virtually all the leading UK suppliers and maintain high levels of quality control and trading standards, including regular reporting of non-compliant businesses to the MHRA.
But in June this year, the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC) published a sensational report alleging that most of the CBD on the market was very poor quality, contained illegal levels of THC and some contained no CBD at all.
Its report was presented as some sort of independent, academic study that should be regarded as science. It wasn’t. It was a cheap marketing stunt. Sure enough, just a few weeks later it announced that all its members’ products were good quality and there was no problem with them.
Now the CMC has thrown itself in with the EU and is backing the classification of CBD products as ‘novel foods’, meaning that any business selling CBD would have to apply for an authorisation at a cost of at least £250,000 in a process taking perhaps two years to complete. The CMC has also aligned itself with an interpretation of the law on THC levels in CBD products which is completely at odds with the established industry. It has sided with the Home Office that there cannot be any THC at all, whereas the industry relies on a definition of ‘exempt products’ in the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 which permits up to 1mg of THC in each container.
As Brexit approaches, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is expected to issue guidance on enforcement of the novel foods classification. If it acts before Brexit then the position will be carried over in the Withdrawal Agreement. And now the CMC has launched yet another trade body, the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry, (ACI) which it is implying will enable CBD suppliers to enjoy a ‘grace period’ from FSA enforcement.
It would be unlawful for the FSA to make any arrangements or offer any ‘grace period’ to CMC or ACI members that is not available to any other business. Mike Harlington of the CTA tried this on before, claiming he had made special arrangements with the FSA for CTA members only. None of this is true. These claims are confidence tricks but the CMC/ACI is pushing it with the requirement to sign up to membership at a cost said to be between £10,000 and £50,000 per year, completely prohibitive for the small businesses that have worked so hard to develop this industry.
The Centre For Medicinal Cannabis Is A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing,
The ‘Big Pharma’ Of British Medicinal Cannabis And CBD.
The CMC appeared sometime in 2018 announcing itself as “the UK’s first and only industry membership body for businesses and investors operating in cannabis based medicinal products (CBMPs) and cannabidiol (CBD) wellness markets.“ This, of course, is nonsense. It’s about the fifth or sixth to set itself up as a trade body in this market and it’s certainly not the only. Between them, the CTA and CannaPro represent hundreds of businesses with millions of satisfied customers. The CMC has only a handful of members.
What the CMC/ACI does have is a great deal of money from its backer, the multimillionaire Paul Birch and a great deal of influence from ex-David Cameron ‘fixer’, Steve Moore, who knows all the right people in all the establishment elites and knows how to pull their strings. In just a few short months it has pumped a fortune into PR and media relations and made itself the go to source for anything on medicinal cannabis and CBD. It has also bought and paid for a large number of highly qualified people with impressive credentials who inevitably carry great weight with the authorities. Its ambitions are clear. It intends to destroy the small businesses that built this market and seize it all for itself and it looks as though it may well succeed.
CannaPro spoke with the FSA earlier this week. For the moment, the FSA cannot act as we are in election ‘purdah’, the civil service can’t really do anything except keep the status quo but that will all change after the election. Then, depending on the new government, it may move rapidly to commence enforcement. What this will mean is impossible to predict but almost certainly the multiples will take stock off the shelves unless some interim arrangements are agreed. Those with retail premises will be in the most immediate danger, online sellers will be in a better position but if Trading Standards officers try to seize stock, they have extraordinary powers and trying to obstruct them may result in arrest.
Of course, the novel foods classification is fake and a lot of evidence has been presented to prove this but it is simply being dismissed. It’s rather like the way the medical establishment dismisses the evidence on medicinal cannabis. If these institutions don’t like evidence they simply ignore it. For obvious reasons, it suits the CMC to get behind the novel food scam but the result for consumers will be a lot less choice and probably substantial price rises. It’s also very bad news for CBD businesses. A lot of people are likely to lose their jobs.
Peter Reynolds 