HOUSTON — Monday is the final day CBD advocates can write to the state to try to save their oils.
The Department of State Health Services may be taking all CBD oils and edibles off Texas shelves, and that’s not sitting well with people who say it’s been their saving grace.
In the cell phone video, you can see the agony in her face.
“It’s episodes and it’s uncontrollable pain. No type of pain medicine really can help it when you have these episodes," LaTonya Whittington said.
It all started when Whittington had a tooth pulled.
“It’s hereditary, and it runs in your family. So it’s not anything that the dentist has done. It’s uncontrollable pain and it slowly comes and goes, it comes and goes," Whittington said.
She found out she had trigeminal neuralgia, the disruption of the trigeminal nerve at the base of the brain.
“You have electric shocks, you are sensitive to light, chewing, brushing your teeth, washing your face. Anything that’s associate with your jaw," Whittington said.
She also found out there’s really no cure -- just pills.
“A jaw pain medicine, a muscle relaxer, this and that," Whittington said.
And the only real relief she says she found lies inside the little bottle of CBD oil.
“It’s a miracle for me, and it helps me function," Whittington said.
But what’s easily stocked on the shelves of many smoke shops may soon be taken away.
It’s a possible protocol by the Department of State Health Services to regulate food products that may contain what they call harmful amounts of CBD.
They say that’s what the FDA calls harmful -- any amount over .3 percent -- so basically any product that says CBD on the label like Whittington’s little bottle would be banned.
She says that would cripple her recovery.
“I was in tears. What it’s going to do is make me more addicted to pills because that’s what I'm going to have to take for what hemp oil is substituting to do," Whittington said.
After Monday, the commissioner will review the comments and decide if and when the protocol would take effect.