FDA May Look Into Medical Marijuana Health Claims

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may start cracking down on claims that marijuana has health benefits that haven’t been proven, the agency’s commissioner said Tuesday.

“I see people who are developing products who are making claims that marijuana has antitumor effects in the setting of cancer,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said at a hearing before Congress on a separate matter. “It’s a much broader question about where our responsibility is to step into this.”

It’s high time to start looking at rules around the plant, which some states have legalized for medicinal or recreational use, the commissioner said.

“We’ll have some answers to this question very soon because I think we do bear some responsibility to start to address these questions,” Gottlieb said.