ri firm develops non-prescription pain relief product using marijuana extract - convergenceri
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WHY IS THIS STORYIMPORTANT?A Rhode Island companyhas developed a topicalchronic pain analgesic,CBD Clinic, using extractedcannabidiol oil frommarijuana that containsvirtually no THC. The firmis planning to launch itsnonprescription productline into the retail marketnext year.
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DEAL FLOW
RI firm develops nonprescription painrelief product using marijuana extractCBD Clinic is available just through professionals now, but a launch into retail market is planned in early 2017
PHOTO COURTESY OF CBD CONTROL
David Goldsmith, whose firm, CBD Clinic, has developed a new, nonprescription topical product to help relieve chronic pain, using CBDextract from marijuana, proudly displaying jars of his new product.
By Richard AsinofPosted 11/21/16
PROVIDENCE – Voters in Massachusetts approved the recreational use of marijuana onNov. 8, along with California, Maine and Nevada, who will now join with Colorado andWashington in making it legal.
Here in Rhode Island, the debate around the benefits of legalizing cannabis will be front andcenter before the R.I General Assembly in its 2017 session, as legislators scramble to keep upwith its neighbor to the north in terms of capturing its fair share of potential taxable revenue.
If the response to the threat of potential lost revenue to the expansion of casinos inMassachusetts is any indication, recreational use of marijuana will likely receive some kindof legislative approval in 2017.
In turn, The Providence Journal will be sponsoring one of its Publick Occurrences forums onDec. 5, “Pot and Profit,” following its investigative series that found an existing system “rife
THE QUESTIONSTHAT NEED TO BEASKEDWhen will the federalgovernment change theSchedule I status ofmarijuana, allowing federalresearch to proceed in amore robust manner on thepotential medicinal benefitsof cannabinoids inmarijuana? As the use ofmedical marijuanaexpands, what kinds ofstandards need to be inplace to measure contentand potency of the weed?How will the legalization ofrecreational marijuana usein Massachusetts changethe political landscape inRhode Island? Is there aneed to refocus attentionon abuse of alcohol andtreatment options foralcoholism in RhodeIsland?
UNDER THE RADARSCREENThe release of the newreport by the U.S. SurgeonGeneral on the epidemic ofdrug addiction andsubstance use in Americaoffers a platform to begin tochange the conversationaround addiction, to focuson it as a disease of thebrain, not a social or moralconflict. Here in RhodeIsland, the governor’s taskforce has been focused onsaving lives, decreasingthe number of RhodeIslanders who die fromoverdoses, promotingprevention and access totreatment.There is still much room formore conversation aroundhow well investments in theclinical model fit within thelarger context around howresources are spent: therole of peers, the need forrecovery housing, the needfor a continuum of carearound treatment andrecovery, the role of thecriminal justice system,and the most efficaciousway to present morepositive messaging to thepublic, addressing thestigma.The coming debate overthe legalization ofrecreational marijuana inRhode Island promises notillumination but furtherhardening of opinions,reflective of the currentpolitical divide under the
with contradictions and stakeholders looking to capitalize at every turn.”
At the heart of the debate is an ongoing conflict between state and federal law officials –whether or not marijuana is a dangerous drug with no currently accepted medical use andhigh potential for abuse, which is what the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency calls a Schedule Idrug and how marijuana is currently classified under federal law, or whether there arenumerous beneficial medicinal properties to be found in the hemp plant, including extractssuch as cannabidiol, that can offer relief to patients.
As a Schedule I drug, federal research is severely proscribed, making it difficult to resolvethe claims around the benefits or detriments of medicinal and recreational marijuana use.
In response, threading the needle of regulation, a local Rhode Island company has developeda new product line for nonprescription chronic pain relief, called CBD Clinic, available inboth an ointment and a cream, that utilizes the extract of cannabidiol in its formulation,produced in partnership with Charlotte’s Web in Colorado.
The initial market response to the new product line has “exceeded our expectations,” DavidGoldsmith, the firm’s top executive, in a recent interview with ConvergenceRI.
Doesn’t get you high. Just better.That’s the new trademarked branding for CBD Clinic product line. The company, also namedCBD Clinic, is a spinoff from the Woonsocketbased firm, Aidance Scientific.
Aidance Scientific, which was founded in 2004, develops and manufactures an extensive lineof mostly allnatural, nonprescription dermatology products in its Rhode Island FDAregistered facility. [See link to ConvergenceRI stories below.]
Aidance products are distributed globally and are available at CVS, Walgreens, and othermajor retailers, according to Goldsmith.
In its formulation of CBD Clinic, Goldsmith said that the company had embarked on a verydifferent regulatory strategy than the hundreds of companies developing medical marijuanaproducts containing THC, the psychoactive substance in marijuana that gets you high.
Instead, the product line was developed using pure cannabidiol oil extracted from the plantthat is nearly devoid of THC, seeking to provide an entirely new class of nonprescriptiontopical medications to capture a share of the $3 billion topical analgesics marketing,according to Goldsmith.
The firm’s mission to help people throughout the world be as painfree as possible and haveeasy access to a cannabisinfused product that, as its branding slogan claims, “Doesn’t getyou high. Just better.”
Here is the ConvergenceRI interview with David Goldsmith, whose company has launchedan innovative nonprescription product line to address chronic pain relief using an extract ofthe hemp plant.
ConvergenceRI: How has the launch of the new product line been going?GOLDSMITH: We have exceeded out own expectations. And our own expectations arehigh. We’ve worked hard, and it’s nice to have an early success.
ConvergenceRI: Is CBD Clinic a cream?GOLDSMITH: It’s available in both creams and ointments. The cream is waterbased; theointment is oilbased.
ConvergenceRI: How is the product being made available?GOLDSMITH: We have a professional series product line we began distributing to healthand wellness professionals a few months ago that is available, through doctors’ offices,across the country.
Currently, we have placed it in about 20 states through several hundred professionals.
ConvergenceRI: Is it currently available as a nonprescription product over the counter?Is it available here in Rhode Island?
new Trump administration.Sen. Jeff Sessions, theTrump nominee to serve asU.S. Attorney General, hadserved as the U.S. attorneyin Mobile, Ala., in the1980s. After taking over acase involving the brutalmurder of a young blackman by two member of theKu Klux Klan, who had slitthe victim’s throat and thenhung his body from a tree,Sessions was reported byCNN to have said, afterlearning that somemembers of the Klan hadsmoked marijuana on theevening of the slaying, thathe thought the KKK wasOK until he found out thatthey smoked pot.
GOLDSMITH: We started distribution in Colorado, Texas and Florida. We’re just in the betatest phase, in a way. We are just now really rolling it out to distributors. There are no localdistributors yet.
ConvergenceRI: Is it available for local practitioners, if they request it?GOLDSMITH: Absolutely.
ConvergenceRI: But it is not yet available in any local drug stores?GOLDSMITH: That’s correct. There are two different kinds of products: one is aprofessional series, which is slightly different than the retail series.
The retail series [product] has not yet been launched. We are planning a crowd funding, precampaign in the next few weeks, with a launch in the next couple of months in retail stores,sometime in the first or second quarter of 2017.
ConvergenceRI: How much does it cost?GOLDSMITH: The professional series runs from $25 to $90 [a jar]. The products havevarying concentrations of CBD [cannabidiol].
The extracted CBD oil is higher than the price of gold. It sells for about $1,700 an ounce.
The $90 jar has 200 milligrams of CBD; the $25 jar has 25 milligrams of CBD.
The $90 jar has the highest concentration of ingredients allowed by the FDA. The $90 jar is our hottest seller. We cannotkeep it in stock.
Chiropractors are ordering two to three to fourdozen of the $90 jar. They buy it at wholesale and resell it. They are usingit in their practices and have seen really great results with [treatment of] chronic pain.
With professional athletes and Olympic athletes, they are reporting really, really good results. One athlete reported that theyhaven’t had the freedom of movement for quite some time after using CBD Clinic, as well as reduction of their pain.
This is the first product that incorporates an extract from cannabis that has almost no THC.
ConvergenceRI: What is the marketing plan moving forward?GOLDSMITH: We’re selling [our professional line] to health practitioner offices in Colorado and Texas – we’re in 20states overall, including North Carolina, Tennessee, California, Virginia and Arkansas.
ConvergenceRI: Can you share market projections in terms of sales?GOLDSMITH: We’re still getting off the ground, but we have very high expectations. It’s a start up. It will take a while.We are in discussions with some very large distributors right now.
Next year, when we launch a crowd funding campaign around the retail series, we hope to do very well with that, weexpect that the products are really going to take off.
What we’re finding in our conversations, across the board, is that people accept on faith [the potential value of theproduct], given so much work that has been done on medical marijuana.
There have been many stories about the efficacy of CBD, including the three CNN documentaries by Dr. Sanjay Gupta,and the little girl that had literally 100 or more seizures a day, and how CBD, delivered in a tincture, dramatically reducedher seizures.
We cannot and do not make any medical claims about our product. CBD is not an approved drug; it is listed as an inactiveingredient.
As formulators, we can say that we have formulated a strongly superior product, based on its active ingredients that help tomake it a really effective product.
ConvergenceRI: What has been the response? Can you share some stories?GOLDSMITH: We were at our first trade show in Texas. Texas is a relatively conservative state. In fact, the governor hadcome out very strongly about medical marijuana. We didn’t know if there would be a lot of pushback.
The doctors totally embraced the potential for [our product]. They were aware of the research globally. We ended up beingswamped by the demand at the trade show.
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We began hearing stories, like the one from a chiropractor in Tennessee. His wife is his office manager, who had someproblems with her shoulder.
“David, I have to work on that shoulder everyday, I’ve had to do it for years. She put on your ointment using a samplefrom the [trade] show, and every day since then. David, I haven’t had to touch her shoulder since the show.”
We hear stories like this all the time. There is a physician in Los Angeles, whose patient is a celebrity chef, and sheforwarded an email from the chef, talking about the substantial reduction in pain after using our product for a week or so.
We do know that we’ve created an extraordinarily effective product. Professional athletes, such as Jake Plummer, theformer quarterback with the Denver Broncos, have praised CBD Clinic. Plummer said: “It goes to the source of pain andtakes it away, allowing me to have freedom of movement and to live an active lifestyle.”
ConvergenceRI: How have you financed the CBD Clinic?GOLDSMITH: We raised our own capital, about $500,000. We spun off from Aidance, and we quickly raised the moneywe needed to get the company off the ground. It was all private money, from friends.
ConvergenceRI: How do you plan to advertise the product?GOLDSMITH: It will be a combination of things. We are reaching out to bloggers, in specialty areas such as lupus, aswell as other areas with chronic pain.
We will be doing a lot of digital media promotion. We’re also advertising in chiropractic magazines, and we will beexpanding that to physical therapy journals and family physician magazines.
ConvergenceRI: How is the CBD extract produced?GOLDSMITH: We have a partnership with Charlotte’s Web in Colorado to produce the CBD extract. It is the best andpurest oil you can buy in the world, and the only one that we’re aware of that is controlled from seed to oil.
They grow their own, right from the seed, in ground that has never seen industrial anything. They control the entireprocess, from growing it to extracting it. It’s the highest quality CBD available anywhere, and we’re fortunate to have themas an exclusive, strategic partner.
We’re the only company that will be using their extracted CBD oil in topical medications.
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