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Martin Lee of project CBD

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[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]C[/dropcap]BD—three little letters, so much potential.

These days, we know about cannabidiol, the ingredient of cannabis that doesn’t get you high but has shown such potential for healing, from reducing inflammation to preventing seizures in children for whom every other treatment has failed.

But when journalist and cannabis activist Martin Lee began hearing about cannabidiol at scientific conferences eight years ago, it was largely a mystery. Growers had spent decades breeding strains to be high in THC, the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis. Just finding a strain high in CBD in California at that time was tough. “It was lousy weed. It didn’t get me high,” said Lee. “But it sure helped my back pain.”

Impressed with the potential, he began writing about this mostly unknown component of cannabis and actively seeking out strains with more CBD than THC. In 2010 he founded the nonprofit Project CBD to be a clearinghouse of information about the compound and help medical cannabis patients find such strains of plant. “It opened up a whole new world to me that I thought was really amazing, and I thought had profound implications for shifting the way society views cannabis,” said Lee.

Evolving science

Early on, Lee noticed that while plenty of scientists attended conferences and forums on cannabis, very few medical doctors did. Such scientific research as existed was written in lingo few medical cannabis patients—or patients of any stripe—could decipher.

Lee saw the mission of Project CBD to bring all these groups together to share knowledge of the incredible potential of the compound and, with growers, to make it available. CBD studies have shown great promise in treating tumors, nausea and psychiatric conditions, as well having anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory affects. The world, he believed, needed to know about this. “We just felt at the time, this seemed to warrant a special kind of attention, the fact the medical marijuana community was ready to embrace CBD-rich cannabis,” he said.

Of course, cannabis without any psychoactive effects can be a tough sell, and it took a long time to get it available. If Lee heard about a strain high in CBD, he would try to connect CBD seekers with the grower so they could get clones. Project CBD began working with dispensaries to educate workers on use and dosing of cannabidiol. Still, CBD may have remained an obscure compound of cannabis, one of over 60 that even most cannasseurs have never heard of, if not for a little girl in Colorado.

Jorge Cervantes, DJ SHort and I at theProject CBD booth at Seattle HempfestA national story

Like many children with epilepsy, medication did little to prevent Charlotte Figi’s seizures. By five years old, she was wheelchair-bound and mostly catatonic from heavy drugs and up to 50 grand mal seizures a day. Her mother, desperate for anything to help, found anecdotal stories online about seizures being reduced or even eliminated with a special kind of cannabis. Fortunately, she lived in Colorado, with a robust medical cannabis industry, and was able to find a grower interested in CBD-rich cannabis.

The story about how Charlotte’s seizures dropped to only one or two a month made headlines around the world. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, long skeptical about medical cannabis, featured the Figis and renounced his earlier stance. In 2013, families began moving to Colorado from across the country by the hundreds to get an epilepsy treatment that would be illegal in their states.

For Lee, that was the turning point. No longer was CBD a compound on the fringe of mainstream cannabis. Here was medicine, something people with no interest in getting “high” could find benefit from.

Project CBD’s main mission since has been to educate newcomers about cannabis, cannabidiol and where to find it, “to help guide them through this strange terrain of CBD products,” Lee said. Their website also lets you find nearby dispensaries selling CBD-rich cannabis.

Despite the preponderance of anecdotal evidence and stories like Charlotte’s, there is still very little scientific evidence on how CBD works to cut seizures or shrink tumors. That’s because the federal government still considers it a Schedule 1 drug with no medical uses.

If and when the federal government reschedules cannabis, Lee expects there to be a huge explosion of CBD products, not just buds or extracts in a dispensary but pharmaceutical products made by massive corporations. The role of Project CBD will be even greater.

For his part, Lee doesn’t think the popularity of CBD-rich cannabis will hurt traditional cannabis.

“I like THC-dominant strains. I also use CBD too. I think that there’s still a lot to be learned on how to use CBD for the best benefit.”

 

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