Over the course of the past year, cannabidiol, or CBD oil, has quickly become the rock star of the medical marijuana industry because of its ability to treat a variety of conditions — including epilepsy — without exposing patients to intoxicating effects.
However, the cannabinoid is still illegal in most of the United States, which has provided an opportunity for some hemp businesses to market a variation of knockoff CBD treatments that they claim have the same healing power as popular strains such as Charlotte’s Web.
However, after patients began submitting complaints about some of these products, including “Real Scientific Hemp Oil,” claiming they were making them sick, a research firm dedicated to cannabidiol education – called Project CBD – launched a full-blown investigation into the matter. After six months, the organization emerged with a 30-page report entitled “Hemp Oil Hustlers: A Project CBD Special Report on Medical Marijuana Inc., HempMeds and Kannaway,” which began as a curious look into an umbrella penny stock company, but transformed into a dissection of the CBD hemp oil industry and its sometimes shady business practices.
Interestingly, Project CBD found that all three companies featured in the report are operated by the same controlling interest, and shows that Kannaway and HempMeds are both subsidiaries of Medical Marijuana Inc. These companies are infamous for making claims about their legal CBD hemp oil being significant sources for CBD because they are derived from imported hemp paste – implying that legal CBD hemp oil is a suitable alternative to CBD medicine.
Yet, as the report indicates, these products are only technically similar and do not provide the same health benefits as high-CBD cannabis strains. “We believe that industrial hemp is not an optimal source of CBD, but it can be a viable source of CBD if certain hemp cultivators are grown organically in good soil and safe extraction and refinement methods are employed,” wrote the authors of the Project CBD report.
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Hi Mike,
I'm a clinical nutrition student and have been wondering about over-the-counter CBD oil for some time. I'm also friends with Bean, and we spoke about this while he was promoting his latest book, "How to Smoke Pot (properly)". I remember thinking that this newly available oil was really nothing but as you stated, a cheap "knockoff". However, I met some folks at CV Sciences a few weeks ago at the Natural Products Expo [East] and was under the impression that their products [now widely available in health food stores] could help in the same way as the oil from medical marijuana. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks, Jamie