Inside STAT: As CBD gains popularity, Washington struggles to keep up

The $300 billion CBD industry is giving Washington a major headache. The cannabis extract is used as a home remedy for everything from pain to anxiety, and celebrities are even considering adding the extract to wine. But this lack of a clear line between therapeutic and food additive means that the FDA is unsure whether to regulate the product as a therapeutic or to treat CBD the way it treats vitamins and other nutritional supplements. “The FDA needs to take a leadership position as quickly as possible to make sure that the wild west of CBD doesn’t harm the public health,” Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former FDA official, told STAT’s Nicholas Florko. Read more here.