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U.S. CBD Industry Exposed In Damning Compliance Report

Written by Peter McCusker

Regulatory issues plaguing the U.S. CBD industry have been brought into stark focus with new research from LegitScript showing almost all of 300 recently-reviewed products are non-compliant.

The study of the online CBD merchants by compliance firm LegitScript found that 98% failed to meet existing regulations, reports Bloomberg news. The report highlights how there are almost 13,000 sellers of CBD on the internet, with 45% of these said to be making non-permissible medical claims.

In tests on 30 products, secured from websites that appeared near the top of search engine results, two-thirds of those contained significantly more or less CBD than advertised, with nine containing less than half. One tested product had only 1% of what it claimed.


CBD Clarity Needed

One bottle of ingestible oil had 18.5 times the allowable amount of lead by California standards. As well as the non-permissible medical claims, incorrect labelling some are also selling into jurisdictions that don’t allow it, says the report.

LegitScript founder and Chief Executive Officer John Horton called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue more clarity on CBD rules for all retailers, as well as online marketplaces. As things stand, the FDA has said no medical claims can be made on CBD products – as Curaleaf recently discovered to its cost – and it is assessing the best way to allow regulated CBD sales as a food supplement.

In May this year the FDA conducted a public hearing into the CBD industry during which concerns were raised over potential health risks from an unregulated CBD market.

Lab Testing

The FDA says it is now ‘evaluating a regulatory framework for products marketed as foods and dietary supplements’, such as CBD and is ’steadfast in its efforts to ‘obtain research, data, and other safety and public health input to inform our approach to protect public health’.

Meanwhile one Illinois lawmaker has put forward a bill to introduce laboratory testing for all CBD products, reports Leafdesk. Bob Morgan, Democrat representative for Deerfield, has introduced legislation to force all CBD goods sold in the state to meet testing requirements developed by the Illinois Department of Agriculture.

This would allow the department to step in to ‘make sure products that are safe for people to use,’ he said. The surge in sales and manufacture of CBD products is the result of last December’s Farm Bill which legalised the cultivation of industrial hemp, from which CBD is derived.

Cannabis research firm Brightfield Group estimates t U.S. sales of CBD products are expected to reach $5 billion this year.

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About the author

Peter McCusker

Peter McCusker is an experienced news and business editor, who believes it’s time to fully embrace the multiple, proven, medical benefits of the cannabis plant.