The Federal Drug Administration only approves a new drug if it can demonstrate objective proof that the drug worked for the intended issue, and is safe for humans at the specified dose. Although a drug like Ibuprofin can kill a human, it requires a very high dose. At it’s proscribed dose, it is FDA-approved and it is proven effective for pain.

It does not mean that a bunch of people got together and said a drug really helped them. FDA-approval also requires multiple stages of scientific trials on humans. A placebo-controlled, double-blind trial, for example, means that th ehuman subjects were given the drug and a placebo to compare. And, it means that both the prescribing physician or researcher and the subject do not know which drug in hand is the placebo or the actual drug. This way, there is no bias, no weighing the results, by making judgments before the drug is tried.

Drug trials are much easier if they are testing a single molecule. Cannabis has literally hundreds of molecules as a living plant, so very few plant drugs are FDA-approved. It’s just too complicated to know what is causing what. THC, the main medicinal molecule in Cannabis, would be easier to study, but it is currently a Schedule 1 drug, and is therefore considered too dangerous to study! (Welcome to the conundrum of the drug war.) However, THC can be made into a synthetic analog and is actually approved by the FDA as dronabinol and nabilone, two drugs used for Nausea and appetite stimulation in anorexia. Unfortunately, they do not have all the other beneficial molecules such as CBD, CBDA, CBG, CBC, etc.

Interestingly, when these molecules work together, they seem to increase the potential medicinal benefits in what is called the “Entourage Effect.” There are some other drug combos that can have an entourage effect- such in the use of HIV cocktails that have synergistic effects, but if you are going to provide FDA-approval for the entourage of cannabis, you would need to study literally hundredes of interacting molecules. This will take years… Or, you could just buy a hemp product today and see if it works for you right now. If it doesn’t then you’re welcome to go back to opioids, alcohol, or countless other options. Either way, consult a physician.