Better regulations are needed to help protect consumers, said Boehnke, the researcher from the University of Michigan. “This is especially true for delta-8 THC products, which reportedly cause similar effects to delta-9 THC, the compound people generally refer to as THC.”
Stopping for Gas, Beef Jerky, and CBD?
Valter also recommends caution when selecting a cannabinoid product. “I think there’s a lot of junk on the market, for sure, especially in terms of CBD,” he said.
Thrash is willing to pay more to get CBD from a more reputable source. “I’m very leery of the $5 stuff you can buy in a gas station. I wouldn’t buy it. Maybe it is the exact same thing – and I’m just getting hoodwinked for a hundred bucks. I don’t know.”
“But I want to buy from the person who can tell me exactly where it came from,” she said.
Unlike prescription medications with precise labeling of ingredients, “with the CBD products, there are so many companies making it,” Gould said. “I don’t buy janky products from people.”
With no required laboratory testing for safety of these products, such as for contaminants like pesticides, solvents, or heavy metals, Boehnke also urges caution. Likewise, there is no verification to prove these products contain the cannabinoid type and quantity that are on the label, he said.
Also, many cannabinoid products can be purchased online, where minimum age requirements are difficult to enforce, Boehnke said.
An Argument to Relax More Laws?
“The most important finding is that when cannabis is legal in some form in a given state, it tends to reduce or eliminate consumer desire for delta-8 THC products,” said Ethan Russo, MD, a board-certified neurologist and psychopharmacology researcher in Vashon, WA, and founder and CEO of credo-science.com. “This is a clear indication that liberalization of the laws must continue and expand to reduce the public health dangers of synthetic unregulated products.”
Russo, who was not affiliated with the study, said the compound delta-8 THC is not the problem, “but rather its manufacture and production.” All the commercially available delta-8 THC products are synthetically produced from excess stock of CBD, he said. “Virtually none are pure, most often contaminated with a host of other synthetic molecules about which we know little or nothing as to their possible toxicology,” he said.