Like…does it make you high?
In 2018, there’s way more to weed than getting glued to your couch with the munchies. In fact, today’s hottest pot products don’t even get you high. But they do claim to slay stress and anxiety, relieve headaches, ease period cramps, soothe skin, improve sleep, and turbocharge your orgasms. And all with no smoke involved. Instead, you can simply rub on a body oil or moisturizer, snack on a chocolate bar, or sip a spiked coffee.
What Is CBD?
The products’ secret ingredient is Cannabidiol, or CBD, the second most abundant chemical found in marijuana plants. Since it lacks the psychoactive properties of tetrahydrocannabinol (aka THC), CBD isn’t intoxicating. Research shows that it might, however, boost your mental and physical well-being, says cannabinoid researcher Marcel Bonn-Miller, PhD, an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. While THC activates cannabinoid receptors that alter the release of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, CBD seems to increase levels of your body’s natural cannabinoid-like compounds, which may help relieve anxiety, regulate chronic pain, and reduce inflammation. As such, CBD is now being touted as a potential treatment for everything from puffy skin to epilepsy.
Maybe that’s why more and more people are “using.” In March, Google shopping searches for CBD oil reached an all-time high, and experts estimate that the fledgling CBD industry could be worth a whopping $2.1 billion by 2020.
Is It Legally Legit?
But before you start slathering yourself with CBD-infused balms and topping your greens with CBD dressing, know that this seemingly magical stuff occupies a legal gray area. If you live in a place where recreational marijuana is allowed (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C.), you can buy CBD goods from online stores and brick-and-mortar retailers. In certain states, CBD may be kosher even if weed is banned. Otherwise, the internet can still deliver them to your door, even though, on a federal level, all types of marijuana are illegal. (For this reason, national retailers like Target, Whole Foods, and Amazon have stopped selling CBD products.) “Technically, buying a CBD cream is a federal misdemeanor—but nobody cares,” says Mark Kleiman, PhD, professor of public policy at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. In other words, the likelihood of the law coming after you for that CBD lip balm is practically zilch, he says.
Why Buyers Should Beware
The bigger prob is that reefer retail has no regulator to monitor what goes into CBD products. “It’s the Wild West out there,” says Bonn-Miller, who in 2017 tested 84 CBD products and found that 26 percent contained less CBD than they claimed to while 42 percent had more. The latter might sound scary, but Bonn-Miller says high levels aren’t known to be dangerous. Too-low levels can make a product ineffective though. (Oh, and 21 percent of the CBD products also contained THC, which can make you high and show up on drug tests.)
To avoid fraud, buy from a company in a state like Colorado that requires pot products be tested for potency and purity, says Sam Kamin, PhD, a professor of marijuana law and policy at the University of Denver. Also, “you can ask companies for their testing reports,” adds Bonn-Miller. He says that stuff like vaginal suppositories and bath bombs have not really been studied: “Until there is hard evidence to show that those work, I’d stick to ingestible and topical products.”