Hemp Oil: Better than the Mediterranean diet, but illegal.

Hello neighbours, how are you? I hope you're not feeling too anxious in these trying times?

Anecdotally, Hemp CBDs can reduce pain, inflammation, anxiety, depression, and improve much more. Scientifically speaking, they're potent antioxidants and anti inflammatories.

We naturally make CBDs (Cannabinoids) like these inside our body, and they occur, sparsely, in many food plants too.

But CBDs are abundant in hemp; aka Cannabis Sativa. Plants named 'Sativas' are ancient and beneficial crops.

In fact (did you know?) Sativa means 'cultivated'.

Believe it or not, but Hemp / Cannabis appears to be humanity's oldest and most sacred food crop.

Confusingly, the most well known hemp CBD/Cannabinoid is also called CBD (Cannabidiol).

According to the WHO, it has “no scope for abuse”. It also has a ludicrously broad range of therapeutic benefits; from anxiety through pain, cancer, and psychosis (see blue, bottom picture).

But CBD is just one of more 180+ Hemp CBDs.

In New Zealand you can only buy CBD from a chemist with a prescription from a doctor. Cannabidiol is a prescription medicine, and THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) is a controlled drug-in NZ.

If you choose to privately import these cannabinoids, they may get through, or they may be confiscated and destroyed. Although if you have a prescription, you can import products fitting the prescription (a copy of which must accompany with your import).

Green fairies provide illegal cannabinoid products to citizens/patients at personal risk to themselves. These can be excellent, or criminal, in quality.

Only one kiwi company so far legally offers hemp extracts to the public, (www.tigerdrops.com) but Tigerdrops are prohibited foods, and not intended for the treatement or prevention of any disease or condition.

Growing your own hemp / cannabis would be the best and cheapest way to access CBDs, but it is unfortunately illegal in New Zealand to grow-or access- CBD Hemp or THC Cannabis for personal use. However the police are supposed to treat Cannabis possession as a health matter these days, so anyone growing, or in possession of, CBD rich cannabis should theoretically escape punishment.

You can legally access hulled hemp seed and hemp seed oil, but MedSafe will not allow kiwis to access the naturally occurring "therapeutic' levels of hemp CBDs normally found in these foods without going through a doctor first.

Hemp CBDs interact with our cannabinoid system in the same way that Mediterranean foods do (Mediterranean Foods have small amounts of similar molecules, and the fats that make them). ie. as powerful, protective, antioxidants, anti inflammatories. Even without CBDs though, Hemp seed oil is still a therapeutic food; because of its essential fatty acids, rich in omega 3s and GLA. These Omega oils are the building blocks of our own internal cannabinoids/natural medicines.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225112/pdf/biomolecules-11-00790.pdf

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Hemp: Prohibited food / Needlessly expensive medicine

Courtney Letica and Shane le Brun pioneered affordable medical cannabis access for patients in NZ with MedLeaf. They supply a third of NZs patients with CBD oil and THC flos/bud.

I know these guys, and they have performed heroically, in the face of a mercilessly uninformed, unsympathetic, (and apparently conflicted) regulator (MedSafe).

Despite its rhetoric, this Labour government is needlessly destroying not just this patient centred company, but two thirds of NZs current medical cannabis supply chain. By October 1st, all of their existing products must be destroyed.

Previously CBD products have been acceptable if they had no more than 2% THC.

But; despite NO ADVERSE HEALTH EVENTS EVER BEING REPORTED SINCE 2017; Medsafe has banned all products currently in the market as they do not meet the most unneccessary standards in the world; Their talk of 'safe and legal' makes zero sense to anyone who understands this field.

The question must be asked, are patients being protected or exploited?

In 2016 FSANZ (Food Safety Aus/NZ) proposed that CBD rich hemp should be a legal food, like in the EU, UK, USA, and much of the world.

But this sensible health proposal was trashed by MedSafe.

OIAs show that MedSafes goal was to ensure “therapeutic goods” were not available to the public as food, unless rendered “sub-therapeutic” by reducing the CBDs to less than naturally occurring levels.

This is a mind boggling fact. The Ministry of Health's medicines regulator opposed a food that could benefit the public's health. Is that a conflict of interest? Or just the way our public service/govt works?

Irritatingly, no politician wants to know about this failure of public service in the Ministry of Health.

Now, in 2021, after much hot air, New Zealand's most affordable products are being pushed out of the market, meaning that our most vulnerable people will have to pay more.

Or maybe your taxes will subsidise overpriced medicines? Australia has just started subsidising $50,000 of CBD a year from some patients. ...It should only cost hundreds really, if it was a food.

Food is medicine. Why did MedSafe oppose natural hemp, and fortified foods?

I think pharma takes care of itself, and we should take care of each other. Natural remedies that heal are the enemy of an industry built on sickness and patents.

Markets without human values are inhuman; and nutraceuticals are foods that pharma is afraid of.