- The World Health Organization was met with opposition from the U.S. after proposing that CBD extracts with less than 0.2% THC should be removed from international drug control.
- U.S. Ambassador Jackie Wolcott addressed a United Nations gathering in Vienna on Thursday to discuss their recommendations.
- Currently, the U.S. is only willing to support two of WHO’s recommendations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) proposed that all CBD extracts possessing less than 0.2% THC should be removed from international drug control — The United States disagreed.
U.S. Ambassador Jackie Wolcott spoke to a United Nations gathering in Vienna on Thursday, fearing that the proposal could “introduce legal ambiguities and contradictions that would undermine effective drug control.”
Wolcott stated that the U.S. is in favor of removing cannabis from Schedule 4 of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), but is against the footnote to exempt low-THC CBD products.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is a category that was made for drugs “particularly liable to abuse” and that don’t have “substantial therapeutic advantages.”
Wolcott also added that other suggestions along with the CBD footnote presented by WHO would “undoubtedly lead to further cannabis abuse.”
Previous WHO Recommendations
WHO made six recommendations in 2019 for altering the way that cannabis and its cousin substances were scheduled in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971.
The majority of WHO’s cannabis scheduling recommendations wouldn’t affect international drug controls, with only two of them affecting products that contain plant-derived cannabidiol.
Wolcott said on Thursday that the U.S. would only be supporting two of WHO’s recommendations:
- Recommendation 5.1 – Proposes to delete cannabis from Schedule 4 of the 1961 convention. However, cannabis would remain in Schedule 1.
- Recommendation 5.4 – Proposes to delete “extracts and tinctures of cannabis” from the same convention.
As for the other recommendations, Wolcott argued that they would cause unnecessary confusion.
“If adopted, at best, they would introduce legal ambiguities and contradictions that would undermine effective drug control, and at worst they could result in the exclusion of control of all THC derived from cannabis cultivated for industrial purposes and THC derived from leaves separated from the cannabis plant,” Wolcott stated.
