How CBD Got Its Start: A Brief Recent History
You like your information quick and easy to read. We get it. So, here’s a brief recent history of how CBD got it’s start.
In the spring of 1998, the British parliament authorized GW Pharmaceuticals to farm cannabis. The government developed a specific and consistent concoction for use in clinical trials. GW’s co-founder Geoffrey Guy, MD, was excited and convinced the Home Office to move forward. By using CBD-rich plants, GW had the potential to provide a cannabis-based medicine with little or no psychoactive result.
That summer, Guy explained his plan at an International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS) meeting. Also, In addition to removing the psychoactivity of THC, Guy said, CBD conferred advantages of its own. GW got its CBD-rich strains by obtaining the genetic library of HortaPharm. HortaPharm was a Dutch seed business ran by American expatriate horticulturists.

The Health Benefits of CBD
CBD-rich cannabis has a deep history of uses to affect some health issues. Queen Victoria consumed CBD-rich cannabis for menstrual cramps in the early 19th century. Animal research had long recommended that CBD lessens anxiety and lowers the severity and recurrence of seizures. Several years ago, CBD-rich strains were commonly not ready for cannabis users in California and other states. Generations of breeding marijuana for the highest THC content and an intense “high” had lowered the CBD to trace amounts. This occurred in most cannabis classes in Northern California, America’s cannabis Mecca.
Dr. Tod Mikuriya, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians creator, stated hope that “our Burbanks in the hills” of Northern California would produce CBD-rich strains. Only if analytic labs started accepting the medical cannabis industry.
More Research Approved!
As the years went by, experts described more hopeful studies involving CBD at conferences of the ICRS, the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicine, and Patients Out of Time. Some California scientists kept up-to-date on the research, and O’Shaughnessy’s reported on it. However, we were merely spectators, not members, until the fall of 2009. This is when Oakland’s Steep Hill Laboratory experimented with cannabis samples provided by Harborside Health Center and found a few strains with higher CBD than THC.
After that, Several dozen labs in medicinal marijuana states were calibrating cannabinoid ratios and recognizing the occasional CBD-rich strain before long. We originally defined “CBD-rich” as 4% or more by dry weight for data gathering purposes. In addition to balanced strains with roughly equal amounts of CBD and THC, a handful of CBD-dominant strains—with 20-to-1 CBD: scientists found THC ratios or higher, raising a cottage industry of CBD-rich concentrates, oil extracts, and other CBD-rich goods.
That was a brief history of how CBD got it’s start. Thanks for reading and join us for new blog posts every week.
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About the Author

David McGinnis
David McGinnis is the Co-Founder and Director of Operations at Hemp Lively. He's a University of Florida graduate and a lifelong Entrepreneur with almost a decade in the Cannabis Industry. He's played a role in over 50 different new Cannabis brands and consults on a regular basis for new Cannabis Company Startups and potential Hemp Lively Private Label customers. David is also a website developer, an excel spreadsheet guru, and graphic designer who's created over 100 ecommerce websites, over a dozen custom CBD Formulation Calculators for his staff, and thousands of product labels and 3D product images. Mr. McGinnis spends 1-2 hours every day learning something new. That combined with his love for complex problem solving makes him a perfect fit for the ever-changing cannabis industry. David works well over 100 hours per week and is, by far, the happiest workaholic you'll ever meet. In his free time, David enjoys spending time with his fiancé, Melanie, and their two Schnauzers, Gatsby and Daisy.
"Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them."