The UK's health regulation department is demanding regulatory oversight for the nation's CBD sellers. Top CBD producers and distributors in the UK received letters from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) informing them that they have 28 days to cease to sell, supply, promote, advertise or process orders for life-saving CBD products.
Marijuana's non-psychoactive agent has become wildly popular in the UK, the only way marijuana is legally sold. Sellers, and therefore patients must now wait until the businesses can apply for a seller's license.
“We have come to the opinion that products containing cannabidiol (CBD) are a medicine. Products for therapeutic use must have a medicines’ licence before they can be legally sold or supplied in the UK. Products will have to meet safety, quality and effectiveness standards to protect public health,” a spokesman for the MHRA said in a statement. “We have written to UK CBD stockists and manufacturers to inform them of our view. These products will require a marketing authorisation to be granted before they can be legally sold, supplied or anywhere advertised in the UK.”
Until now, businesses could sell products containing CBD, so long as no medical claims were made about the product. The UK, like the US, is now feeling the sobering aspects of regulated marijuana. Most licenses are far too expensive and out of reach for most vendors to afford.
"The MHRA have sent letters out to the leading suppliers of CBD products," Tony Calamita, director of CBD Oils UK, told VICE. "The letter basically says they now consider CBD a medicine, which means to advertise and sell it in the UK you require a marketing authorisation license, which potentially costs millions in research and years in chemical data. We've been given 28 days to cease trading, which is disgusting."
The crackdown leaves UK patients to fend for themselves for supply, and presumably obtain their CBD through the black market until things hopefully get straightened out legally.
