Cannabis, CBD, Hemp Benefits
The FDA Approved an Opioid 1,000 Times Stronger Than Morphine While Blocking Cannabis Research for Decades
Drug Policy · FDA · Cannabis Research
Two things were happening at the same time in America. One: the FDA was waving through synthetic opioids — including one stronger than fentanyl — during the deadliest drug crisis in U.S. history. Two: that same agency, working with the DEA, was making cannabis research so difficult that scientists could barely study it. Here’s the timeline, year by year.
In November 2018, at the peak of the opioid epidemic, the FDA approved a new drug called Dsuvia. It’s a tablet form of sufentanil — a synthetic opioid that is 500 to 1,000 times stronger than morphine and 10 times stronger than fentanyl, the drug that was already killing more than 130 Americans every day.
The FDA’s own advisory panel chairman publicly broke with his committee to oppose it. A U.S. Senator warned that “an opioid 1,000 times more powerful than morphine is 1,000 times more likely to kill.” The FDA approved it anyway.
At the same time — across those same years — researchers trying to study CBD, a non-intoxicating plant compound with a well-documented safety record, had to apply for special DEA licenses, source their material from a single government-approved facility, and navigate a bureaucratic maze that made serious research nearly impossible.
Same agency. Same era. Very different outcomes. Let’s go through it.
Track One: The Opioid Express
The story of the opioid crisis starts with a single drug approval and a single misleading sentence on a label.
Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler later said of the OxyContin approval: “No doubt it was a mistake. It was certainly one of the worst medical mistakes, a major mistake.” Purdue made over $35 billion in OxyContin sales before it was done.
Track Two: The Cannabis Cage
While all of this was happening, researchers who wanted to study cannabis for pain, sleep, or anxiety were trapped in a very different system.
Since 1970, cannabis has been classified as Schedule I under federal law — the most restrictive category, reserved for substances with “no accepted medical use” and “high abuse potential.” That’s the same schedule as heroin. It’s a more restricted category than cocaine or meth, both of which are Schedule II.
The Revolving Door
Here’s the part worth sitting with.
The two main FDA reviewers who approved OxyContin in 1995 both later took jobs at Purdue Pharma. One of them, Dr. Curtis Wright IV, met with Purdue representatives at a hotel near FDA offices during the review process, allowed the company to help write portions of his official assessment, signed off on the label — and resigned from the FDA a year later to work for Purdue at a much higher salary.
The FDA did not properly enforce the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act when it approved Purdue Pharma’s new drug application. The FDA has not undertaken a root cause analysis of its regulatory errors that contributed to this public health catastrophe.
— American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 2020
That was written in 2020. No such analysis has happened since. The Sackler family, which owned Purdue, is still worth an estimated $10+ billion even after bankruptcy and settlements.
What This Actually Means
The gap here isn’t a coincidence. It’s a system doing exactly what systems do — rewarding what’s profitable and restricting what isn’t.
Patentable synthetic drugs generate enormous returns and have every incentive to move quickly through approval. A plant that has been used medicinally for thousands of years can’t be patented — so there’s no financial engine pushing it through the process. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry spends more on lobbying than any other sector in America.
The result: an agency that approved an opioid 1,000 times stronger than morphine during a historic overdose crisis, while simultaneously ruling that a non-lethal plant compound with millennia of documented human use couldn’t even be sold as a supplement without congressional approval.
Both of those things were true. At the same time. In the same country. Managed by the same regulatory body.
From The Canna Blog
For more on the safety comparison between CBD and the drugs we’ve been reaching for instead, read our piece on CBD vs. Tylenol. And for the bigger picture on why pharmaceuticals isolate single compounds while cannabis works differently, see Big Pharma Patented Nature and Called It Medicine.
Where Things Stand Now
Cannabis moving to Schedule III in 2025 is a real and meaningful step. It eases research barriers, acknowledges medical value, and begins correcting 55 years of misclassification. A December 2025 executive order pushed federal agencies to go further, improving access to hemp-derived CBD products.
These are good things. They are also very, very late.
The opioid crisis that began with OxyContin’s approval in 1995 has never ended. An estimated 187 Americans still die from opioid overdoses every day. We are only now beginning to build a serious scientific record on cannabinoids — research that was held back not by a lack of curiosity from scientists, but by a deliberate policy choice to keep a non-lethal plant in the most restricted drug category in federal law.
The people using CBD tinctures and gummies for pain, anxiety, and sleep were never the problem. They were just operating in a system that had its priorities upside down for a very long time.