{"id":1214,"date":"2021-09-20T21:02:26","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T21:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=57129"},"modified":"2021-09-20T21:02:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T21:02:26","slug":"are-delta-8-thc-products-actually-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=1214","title":{"rendered":"Are Delta-8 THC Products Actually Dangerous?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last Tuesday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration published<\/a> a warning to the public \u201cregarding the potential health risks of using Delta-8 THC products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of their reasoning for putting out a statement was due to \u201can uptick in adverse event reports to the FDA and the nation\u2019s poison control centers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questionable Side Effects<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Cannabis isn\u2019t supposed to give you a hangover. But that\u2019s exactly what the Delta-8 THC<\/a> gummies\u2014purchased from a gas station, copped at a smoke shop, or ordered online \u2014did to one of Greg Gerdeman\u2019s friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took one and felt totally hung over the next day,\u201d recounted Gerdeman, a biochemist and researcher and member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. \u201cThey were like, \u2018What was that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Investigating that question is what interests Gerdeman. As a \u201clesser known\u201d cannabinoid, known to science for decades, Delta-8 THC\u2014now famous and in vogue in the past year, since it can be derived from hemp, and thus federally legal\u2014is safe and therapeutic. So that wasn\u2019t the problem.<\/p>\n

The culprit, Gerdeman suspects, was whatever else was in the gummy: Impurities, possibly, like residual solvents from the chemical synthesis process in which CBD isolate is converted to Delta-8 THC.<\/p>\n

Or something else entirely different, like one of the still-unknown isomers created during that process.<\/p>\n

As for exactly<\/em> what that was, and what it could do to the human body? Nobody knows. And that, along with a high probability for contamination with toxic solvents, is the problem with Delta-8 THC products. According to Gerdeman and his SCC colleagues<\/a> these dangerous unknowns are an enormous potential liability for the burgeoning hemp industry, for which Delta-8 THC products are of vital importance.<\/p>\n

Consensus For Concern<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Since former President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill into law, legalizing hemp cultivation and production in the U.S., the hemp industry has grown by leaps and bounds, but has largely failed to find profitable traction. In late 2019, with hemp companies overproducing and extraction companies sitting on mounds of unsold CBD isolate, a savior appeared in the guise of Delta-8 THC.<\/p>\n

Molecularly very similar to Delta-9 THC found in adult-use cannabis (and banned by the federal Controlled Substances Act), Delta-8 THC acts on the brain and body in a similar fashion. And conveniently, can be derived from CBD isolate via a relatively simple chemical process.<\/p>\n

But the cannabis industry has moved faster than either regulatory agencies or researchers. Late last month, the SCC\u2014which includes other respected cannabis researchers such as Dr. Ethan Russo\u2014released a \u201cconsensus\u201d paper on Delta-8 THC products.<\/a><\/p>\n

Untrained Chemists, Unknown Compounds<\/strong><\/h4>\n

According to the SCC, the \u201cuntrained garage chemists\u201d that are making Delta-8 THC products\u2014which, with few exceptions, are not regulated by states and are not marketed or sold with any assurance of potency or quality control\u2014may be selling products contaminated with solvents like the \u201clight hydrocarbons\u201d used in the extraction process.<\/p>\n

More troubling, perhaps, is the science experiment Delta-8 THC product users are conducting on themselves\u2014knowingly or not. According to the SCC, the conversion process creates \u201ca number of molecular isomers that do not exist in nature\u201d and that have yet to be fully identified in lab analyses.<\/p>\n

And \u201cwe have no knowledge\u201d how these \u201cunidentifiable\u2026 isomers behave in the body,\u201d according to the SCC\u2019s consensus statement. Do they cause hangovers? Will they interact poorly with other drugs? How much of them are in Delta-8 products made from CBD isolate with 80 percent purity? These are questions consumers should ask, but product makers themselves likely have no idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s most often underappreciated and completely glossed over in all of the sort of bubblegum \u2018What is Delta 8\u2019 stories out there, are the impurities that are created by the synthetic process,\u201d Gerdeman said. \u201cThe fact that it can be done so cheaply and with a lot of side products that are completely unknown to nature\u2026 that\u2019s what I am mostly concerned with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not concerned about Delta 8 as a molecule,\u201d he added. \u201cWe know very well cannabinoids are remarkably safe and therapeutic molecules.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I am most concerned about is, chemists are cooking together products and they\u2019re able to sell their work in the public marketplace when it\u2019s only met internal controls,\u201d Gerdeman said.<\/p>\n

Hemp Industry Aware<\/strong><\/h4>\n

While Delta-8 product makers claim their wares are safe and pass muster, hemp advocates are aware of the issues raised by the SCC.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly it\u2019s something that has never been in the food or supplement supply chain, and that\u2019s a problem from a regulatory standpoint,\u201d said Bob Hoban, a Denver-based attorney who specializes in the hemp industry and has advocated for hemp legalization. \u201cThese new isomers are not found in trace quantities in hemp seed oil, or hemp seed, or anything that was previously allowed under federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s concerning to the public, and it should be,\u201d Hoban added.<\/p>\n

Though there are examples in medical literature of dangerous and potentially deadly interactions with CBD products, there are no such examples yet of a Delta-8 product causing health problems. This could partially be because Delta-8 is still so new.<\/p>\n

For years the federal government has pondered product-safety standards for products containing hemp derived CBD. The federal Food and Drug Administration may add Delta-8 products to regulations and may issue regulations Delta-8 product makers don\u2019t like if Delta-8 product makers fail to self-regulate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration published a warning to the public \u201cregarding the potential health risks of using Delta-8 THC products.\u201d Part of their reasoning for putting out a statement was due to \u201can uptick in adverse event reports to the FDA and the nation\u2019s poison control centers.\u201d Questionable Side Effects Cannabis isn\u2019t supposed to give you a hangover. But that\u2019s exactly what the Delta-8 THC gummies\u2014purchased from a gas station, copped at a smoke shop, or ordered online \u2014did to one of Greg Gerdeman\u2019s friends. \u201cThey took one and felt totally… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}