It's only the second day of 2017 and British stoners have already been delivered news that could make it the GOAT: products containing a cannabis-based ingredient called cannabidiol (or CBD) are to be classed as medicines by the UK medicines regulator from this year.
The Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said they had looked at CBT after a number of manufacturing companies had been making "overt medicinal claims" about products.
Gerald Heddel, director of inspection and enforcement at the agency, told Sky News: "The change really came about with us offering an opinion that CBD is in fact a medicine, and that opinion was based on the fact that we noted that people were making some quite stark claims about serious diseases that could be treated with CBD."
He added that a review of the evidence showed that "it was clear that people are using this product with the understandable belief that it will actually help".
Cannabis has two key ingredients - THC and CBD. The THC is what gets people stoned, as well as making you anxious and psychotic. But CBD has the opposite effect, often calming people down - which is why it is sometimes used as medicine.
Those people in the UK currently using CBD get their supplies online in an unregulated and potentially unsafe market, but the decision by the MHRA means manufacturers will now need to demonstrate their CBD products meet safety, quality and effectiveness standards.
Dr Hamed Khan, medical lecturer at St George's University Hospital, stressed the ruling "is only about CBDs, which is something very specific, and not cannabis and marijuana as a whole".
However campaigners for weed's legalisation believe classifying CBDs as a medicine opens up the medicinal marijuana debate.
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Featured Image Credit:Topics: Cannabis