The signs are everywhere. Outside the Village Apothecary in Woodstock, N.Y., an A-frame sign blocks the sidewalk, screaming: “We have CBD!!” On Manhattan’s 42nd Street, a new billboard shows lotions from Uncle Bud’s Hemp.
“How do you differentiate among the 100, 200, 300 new CBD companies that are on every street corner?” says Joe Dowling, CEO of the CBD supplement seller CV Sciences . “You are going to see a Wild West environment for a while.”Hemp’s strait-laced nature is why it’s the first member of the cannabis family to get out from under the federal Controlled Substances Act.The 2014 Farm Bill allowed states to start pilot projects to grow hemp and extract CBD.
Hemp’s moment is gratifying for Charlotte’s Web Chairman Joel Stanley. “It’s really growing up,” he says of the hemp business. “We’ll see it in cosmetics, food, capsules, tinctures, and drugs.” With the Farm Bill’s blessing and CBD mania in bloom, hemp vendors have set their sights on the aisles of food, drug, and mass-merchandise retailers. Last month, the U.S. cannabis company Curaleaf Holdings said that its hemp products will be in more than 800 CVS Health stores in 10 states. Initially, CVS will carry lotions and transdermal patches.
Joel Stanley says any disease treatment claims were made by customers, not his company. Charlotte’s Web has cooperated with the FDA and censors customer testimonials on the company’s social media. He also says the drug approval process doesn’t suit plant extracts. “The regulatory framework that has been built around Western medicine is broken, to be honest,” he says.