With the popularity of CBD around the world, people are itching to know who first discovered CBD and the many CBD oil benefits. Because CBD oil has made a recent resurgence in popularity many people are assuming that it is a relatively new invention, but the truth is over half a century ago people discovered how to use CBD oil to reap its many benefits. Today we are going to take a look at the history of CBD and where it began.
The History of CBD
The first extraction of CBD from a cannabis plant happened in the 1940s and was done by Roger Adams, he was a Harvard University graduate who extracted oil from cannabis to TiVo without even knowing what he was doing. After several years Adams, along with other scientists, realized that he had extracted a chemical compound from the plant and that started the initial research into CBD and CBD oil benefits.
The work of Adams was only the initial research into CBD and is often not considered to be modern research. Significant strides in CBD research happened in 1946 is Dr. Loewe began conducting tests with lab animals and CBD and proved that CBD does not have psychoactive effects like its counterpart THC. Around the same time period, another doctor discovered the chemical structure of CBD, earning himself the title of “The scientist who discovered CBD.” This doctor’s name was Dr. Raphael Mechoulam.
From the research done by all of these scientists, further research was fueled around the world, leading to further testing and discoveries. After his initial discovery, Dr. Mechoulam continued to be a big force behind the research into CBD and in fact is still continuing research into the effects of cannabis in CBD. In 2019 he announced that he may have found further therapeutic uses for cannabinoids.
That Is Not Where It Actually Starts
This only shows the scientific discovery of CBD, but one could argue that CBD has a history that’s much deeper than the scientific history that we’ve talked about here. For ages, people have been using the hemp plant and other cannabis plants for both healing and therapeutic purposes and if we truly want to understand the history of CBD we also need to understand the history of cannabinoids and cannabis as a whole.
Where the history of clinical and medical uses of cannabis really starts in history is the 2700s BC in China, where the Chinese Emperor Sheng Nung head cannabis infused into tea to help with a number of problems he was experiencing such as memory trouble, gout, and malaria. This was only the first time that the use of cannabis was documented, it is suspected that cannabis has been used long before that, possibly more than a thousand years before that. The first use of cannabis has been tied back to Central Asia including areas such as southern Siberia and Mongolia, one way that this is been found is through burnt cannabis seeds found in burial mounds of the Kurgan in Siberia.
From China, cannabis traveled to Korea via coastal farmers and then to India where cannabis can be found in ancient Indian poetry. After that, marijuana traveled around the world being used by people both recreationally and medicinally for a variety of purposes, some cultures even used it spiritually.
Despite the numerous amounts of research conducted into CBD, modern scientific research wasn’t conducted into cannabis until 1839 when William B. O’Shaughnessy conducted a study that investigated the therapeutic effects of cannabis and started the scientific thought into the potential medicinal uses of cannabis. His work focused on breaking down the base effects of the plant by describing how each effect could be used as a medical application, the main focus of his work was using cannabis as an anesthetic. The research performed by O’Shaughnessy was groundbreaking scientifically and started the door opening to greater discoveries involving cannabis.
CBD is a cannabinoid, but it is not the first cannabinoid that has been found in cannabis, chemist Robert S Cahn discovered Cannabinol or CBN. CBN was a start to discovering the compounds that went to make up cannabis and the various plants that make up that family.
Marijuana in the United States
It took until the 19th century for marijuana to make it to the United States and it didn’t take long for marijuana to become illegal, Utah was the first state to make marijuana illegal in 1915 and within 16 years marijuana was illegal in 29 states in total. The federal government followed that by making marijuana illegal in 1937 bypassing the Marijuana Tax Act. Despite the banning of marijuana by the United States, many people enjoyed its benefits and the use of cannabis was not limited to marijuana. The United States relies heavily on hemp products imported from other countries, this can be seen by the reduction in imports during World War II requiring the United States to restart its protection of hemp products temporarily.
What Is CBD Used For Today?
Now that we’ve established how CBD has gotten to where it is now we think it’s important to briefly touch on how that history has come to where we are now by looking at what CBD is currently used for. It wasn’t until recently that CBD became legal in the United States, thus it wasn’t a popular medicinal aid until recently in one of the biggest countries in the world. Now, thanks to many researchers such as those we read about today, CBD is being studied in detail as a treatment for many potential ailments and as a therapeutic tool, along with being a skincare treatment, relaxant, and a preventative.
In recent history a major breakthrough for CBD and cannabis, in general, is made when the FDA recognized its first CBD based medication to be allowed to be sold in the United States, this medication is known as Epidiolex. In 2018 Epidiolex was approved by the FDA to treat specific types of epilepsy known as Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome and Dravet Syndrome. Before this, the FDA and other federal agencies took a stance that CBD contained no medical benefits. With this new approval of CBD for treating seizures, it is greatly hoped that we will be able to further the approval of CBD for treating other conditions that have been researched, such as helping with heart problems, anxiety reduction, pain relief, as a neuroprotective agent, and many other potential uses.
With generations of usage under its belt CBD is a potential source of many benefits for both medical treatments and therapeutic treatments, despite all the research that has gone into it more research is still needed and this is acknowledged by many leading CBD experts. That is one of the reasons that Dr. Mechoulam is still performing research into CBD to prove that it has many benefits that are still going on acknowledged around the world today.
Now that CBD has been made legal in the United States, there are many different sources for getting CBD. If you are interested in trying CBD to help with your day-to-day upkeep, as a medicinal tool, or for any other reason, it is now no longer that hard to get a hold of. The main thing that you will want to ensure is that you are getting quality CBD as companies have already broken into the market trying to sell cheap CBD, synthetic CBD, and knockoff CBD to try and make money. Once you found quality CBD it is likely that you will notice many of its benefits.
