Federal government is now funding research on CBD extracts

The federal government is now funding cannabis research on cannabinoid extractions and food additives. It’s a big story.

Here, however, the strange dichotomy within the federal government plays a role. Last month, a federal court referred a hemp tea seller back to a regional one for not meeting specifications, if not a generalized nuisance. In April, however, the news comes that a Berlin-based company, Becanex, has received a little more than a quarter of a million euros from the Central Innovation Program for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (ZIM) for developing a cannabinoid-containing emulsion for industrial food production.

Interesting enough, if not slightly contradicting, as is common in the weed business. It is even more interesting to understand that the federal government’s program behind it is no less than the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy – which is as central as possible for future German economic investments.

It’s easy to categorize these developments in the big buckets of times when they are changing – and at a fairly rapid pace. But cannabiz is not and is far from being an industry in which it is possible to treat even hemp “like” any other plant. Even beyond the THC discussion.

The federal government is starting to accept hemp

Now that the worst stigma in general deviates from the flower, there is great curiosity about everything cannabis related and literally blooming all over Germany. The medical discussion and regulation of the industry is in full swing. But beyond that? The common grocery stores offer cheap hemp oil on the front pages of the weekly mailers. Enter the stores themselves and hemp stands in multiple incarnations and in multiple sections on the shelves.

However, it is not easy to get there.

Until last autumn, the reality was that the entire plant (Cannabis Sativa L) was viewed as a “narcotic” at European level. Beyond the discussion of whether or not CBD is a narcotic, however, the next question lies. Namely, where the various extracts of the plant itself should be placed (beyond all psychotropic cannabinoids). This includes the highly controversial discussion about terpenes (which are themselves largely unregulated) as well as ample evidence from the cosmetics industry that at least when applied topically, unless otherwise consumed, a cannabis allergy is clearly present.

So far, beyond the medical classifications, this has led the plant and its extracts generally to a delicate and controversial regulatory pathway known as “novel food” – a regulation observed across Europe and the UK.

By and large, a food is “novel” if it has not been consumed by the population on a large scale since 1997.

CBD as the beginning of a Franconian Weed conversation?

Where this occurs with cannabis is of course controversial. The plant came to Europe via ancient trade routes and there are clearly cannabis genetics at this point that are native to the region and have been consumed by humans for at least as long.

Correctly categorizing these and understanding the effects of all aspects of the plant on humans (and animals) is another conversation. Especially – and this is very important in the cannabis conversation – when it comes to how cannabinoids and essential oils are then extracted from the plant.

The novel food regulation also covers this part of the discussion. And where it doesn’t, especially on the even more exotic sides of it all (like Nano), it jumps to a place that’s pretty disruptive.

The federal government and the cannabis code?

Nano-extractions, found in both medicine and food in North America, represent an even more fundamental scientific discussion that is profound in countries like Europe. Nano Tech creates a manufacturing process at the cellular level. And while injecting cannabinoids directly into this process can be a response to any disease that causes mutation or destruction (viruses are just one aspect of it), the delivery mechanism that uses them could well be illegal under European anti-tampering laws his data and material (starting with the GDPR, but also with post-Nazi laws about their manipulation).

By and large, these discussions fall under what is known as the Nuremberg Codex from German, the global standard (however much interpreted it may be) for guiding the practice of human experimentation wherever it is implemented.

Like it or not, in other words, no matter how reform-minded you are, there are now very big questions about the uses of all parts of the cannabis plant – in all aspects of food and medicine, which very much have not been definitively answered – and will not be until much more global research has been done.

In other words, the German government and Germany as a whole are ultimately taking steps to understand how this plant and all of its various parts interact with humans in the first organized way since before World War II.

Despite all the delays and bumps in the road, there is a fundamental shift, if not in some ways, the acceptance of how many of the processes, if not the “medicine” of the 20th century, not only purposely left cannabis out of this conversation, but now have to adjust and change again to accept it.