UTICA, N.Y. -- Daniel Williams lives in pain every day.
"I've got a lot of discs that need fusions," said Williams, a Utica resident. "A few discs in my upper back that are all collapsed. The last 15 years, I've been waking up feeling like I got beat up in the parking lot the night before."
Over those 15 years, he's tried everything.
"They put me on hydrocodone, and then I needed something stronger, so they put me on Percocet, and then I needed injections constantly,” he said.
Finally, in September, Williams found something that worked.
"The CBD is the first thing that has helped my pain,” said Williams.
CBD is an extract from either the marijuana or hemp plant that has been used to treat chronic pain, seizures, and even PTSD. The hemp plant product has been legal and accessible online for years. But now the DEA is changing the regulation.
"The DEA said, as of January 13, we're going to consider this safe CBD stuff just as bad as heroin,” said Dr. Gary Rodziewicz, founder of MedMarijuanaConsultants.
According to the DEA's federal notice, they're making this distinction because CBD will still contain amounts of THC, the psychoactive substance in marijuana.
"There may be a trace of THC in there,” Rodziewicz said, “but it does not get you high. It has absolutely no buzz associated with it."
Williams and others will still be able to access CBD through dispensaries legal in New York, but they will not be able to buy it online from an out-of-state retailer. So rather than pay $30 at a certified online retailer, Dr. Rodziewicz says his patients could pay anywhere between $90 to $900 for what they need.
"It means a lot to me that this is going to be taken away,” said Williams. “Now I’m forced to spend this amount of money for something that I could get for a quarter of the price somewhere else.”