Celebrating National CBD Day
It’s that time of year again, when we don our hemp gear and drink our traditional medicinal beverages to toast those that came beforehand. Does this ancient and storied tradition not sound familiar? Don’t worry, it’s only been around since 2017. Let’s learn more about National CBD Day.
When Is National CBD Day?
National CBD Day falls on August 8th every year (though with all the promise of the compound, we feel it should be every day). It’s a day to celebrate the legalization of CBD, and its medical and personal health benefits. It’s a day to celebrate that we now have access to one of nature’s medicinal wonders, denied to us since the criminalization of cannabis, and the walk that we have taken to come back from that brink.
National CBD Day History
To fully understand the National CBD Day, the CBD boom, and how both came about, we have to set the stage a bit.
In 2014, the U.S. passed the Agriculture Bill of 2014, a tediously named bill that deep within its pages created a pilot hemp farming program to test the waters for the regulatory and commercial viability of a low-THC cannabis crop. However, the DEA and several state legislatures had been anything but cooperative, filing multiple lawsuits against growers and particularly against people selling extracts of low-THC cannabis - despite its now legality per the Agriculture Bill.
High on the list of these problematized extracts was CBD. CBD has a chemical structure that is very close to THC, in fact, at an earlier point in their synthesis, they come from the exact same compound CBGA. As you’re probably aware, CBD has extremely different effects from THC. It doesn’t get you high, and it doesn’t create any of the more intense effects of marijuana, but the DEA was still worried that legalizing a compound that was one atom different from THC would prevent them from being able to regulate THC. This concern led to a huge amount of pushback against the compound.
At the same time, medical research was finding more potential uses for CBD. In humans, the brain’s endocannabinoids that are naturally produced by our body regulate a huge amount of our neurological well-being, and CBD and its cousin compounds interface with those same receptors in our brains.
The endocannabinoid system interacts with everything from how our brains deal with high levels of stress, to how our brains rebuild themselves after physical injury, to how our brains grow in the first place. This made CBD a prime target for research on anti-anxiety, antipsychotic, and neurological development or maintenance issues. And in the lead-up to 2017, one of those leads was bearing fruit, CBD proved to be a promising treatment for epilepsy and was under review by the FDA.
So, this is where we find the origins of National CBD Day. On the one hand, medical advances coming down the pipeline, and activists pushing for legalization — on the other hand, an uphill battle against the DEA and other state legislatures looking to shut this down.
How Did National CBD Day Become a Thing?
At this point in 2017, a fledgling CBD company called cbdMD had a bright idea. To promote the compound and its possibilities, and to help push the effort to legalize it over the edge they applied with the National Calendar Board to establish August 8th as the first National CBD Day. They established a blitz of events and ads targeted towards those likely to adopt the cause or be interested in the applications of the compound, a day to promote everything good that this new potential medicine could do.
Did It Work?
While the first National CBD Day didn’t immediately open the floodgates, the overall effort brought new allies to the cause. By 2018, a large bipartisan effort of legislators joined up to start to push through the legalization of CBD and the growth of low-THC cannabis strains like hemp nationwide. Finally, in December 2018, they broke through, adding legislation to the 2018 Farm Bill that achieved those goals.
The State of CBD Today
Since then, the market for CBD has absolutely exploded. In 2020, despite the huge amount of turbulence that the world faced, CBD still had a $2.8 billion global market and it’s only expected to keep growing. Both medicinal and personal CBD products are expected to grow explosively over the next few years, with their medicinal applications and personal health applications only likely to increase as we move forward (estimates pointing to as much as 21.2% growth in the market every year).
In 2018, most people had barely heard of CBD, let alone tried it. Now you will find CBD being prescribed for epilepsy (in an FDA-approved format, no less), in cocktails in bars, in rubs for pain, and even in your morning coffee. From a nearly zero percent adoption or even knowledge rate, the number of American adults who have tried CBD is now estimated to be nearly 64,000,000. At jumps of this size, CBD has undoubtedly shown one of the fastest adoptions of any medical product in recent history - and it is showing no sign of slowing so far. In fact, as the regulations for the production and sale of CBD are better defined and it’s easier for people to join the market and share their products, we might even see things speed up.
This is a staggering, incredible success that goes beyond what almost anyone expected and with all of this rapid change already, it is important that we all know more about CBD and that we make sure that what we’re using it for is well-researched.
CBD is now being studied for potential (not confirmed) use in diseases far beyond forms of epilepsy.
These studies include:
- Parkinson's Disease
- Ulcerative Colitis
- Substance Use Disorders
- Schizophrenia
- Anti-anxiety
- Anti-nausea
- Anti-inflammatory
- Pain reduction
- Antipsychotic
None of these uses have been approved by the FDA as of yet (exception: Epidiolex, the only FDA-approved cannabinoid-based therapy for certain forms of epilepsy), but with the amount of needed research going into the compound, it is likely that we will soon be hearing about new, data-backed uses for CBD.
Celebrating the Future of CBD
National CBD Day is about celebrating a victory for the American consumer and the American grower, and most of all the reclaiming of nature’s gifts. It’s about spreading awareness of what CBD can do for people and, above all, educating on CBD’s immense potential.
So, in the name of National CBD Day, here’s what we know and can tell you about CBD, without being your doctor or knowing you personally.
Anecdotally, some people who use CBD report that it has mild effects in improving their mood that manifest roughly 30 days after use (think of CBD as a vitamin, in that it is most effective when taken consistently). These mood-improving effects are not psychoactive and instead are usually calming, or offer buoyant feelings to a person’s attitude. Some people also report that it improves their sleep by calming the restlessness of the limbs and/or racing thoughts.
Many who use CBD on a non-medical basis report that it has benefits for fighting against muscle soreness, likely due to its powerful anti-inflammatory properties. This is something that people report as helpful for the aches and pains of the day and as very helpful for recovery from strenuous injury. People often apply this as a topical cream for localized effects, or as a tincture infused into foods, or added to their favorite beverage. https://player.vimeo.com/video/585827264
Despite its promising properties and the anecdotal evidence, much more research is needed to fully understand CBD and its medicinal potential.
As we wait for this research, we can raise a cup to the project, sit back, and take a moment to speak to our neighbors and friends about their understanding of CBD and our own experiences with the compound. We can dispel some myths, and we can recognize how remarkable it is that in just a few short years we’ve already come so far from the scant few farms being bothered by the DEA and threatened with a short drop into non-existence, to a nationwide market, someone selling CBD in nearly every town, and researchers now racing to be the first to research the newly legalized compound.
Perspectives do not change overnight. They take time, they take patience, they take an unreasonable amount of persistence, and sometimes they also take creativity, like a silly day to celebrate a real thing that holds endless potential to make people’s lives.
How are you going to celebrate National CBD Day this year? We can’t wait to find out. Shop online with MÜV Florida for CBD products for your health and wellness needs.
Happy National CBD Day everyone!
Content Manager for MÜV Florida and Contributor for Zen Leaf Dispensaries. A cannabis connoisseur with a passion for explaining the miraculous possibility of the plant, Swan began her journey with cannabis as a recreational user and quickly realized its positive impact on her depression and severe anxiety. She joined the cannabis industry as Receptionist and MedTender and witnessed first-hand the immense potential of the plant for a wide variety of ailments, deepening her passion for alternative medicine. Swan is dedicated to self-education on the plant and sharing its potential with all. She holds a Journalism degree from the University of Iowa.
