Recent data from Leafreport shows less than half of CBD brands tested the majority of their products for potency and 60 per cent of products did not match the labelled CBD content.
The cannabis and CBD industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in North America with many other countries, including the UK and much of Europe, starting to catch up. But as the sector grows regulators have lagged behind, allowing for mislabeled and untested products to flood the market.
Although regulators are struggling to keep up with the rapid growth of the nascent sector, increasing competition has helped to boost the number of companies carrying out third party testing. Despite some small steps being made towards a more regulated industry, recent data has found that there is still a long way to go.
In August 2021, Leafreport, a peer-reviewed watchdog for the CBD sector reviewed 2946 products from 136 CBD brands for purity and potency testing. The results confirmed the CBD industry remains a ‘wild west’ with mislabelling and inaccurate claims still running rife. Less than half of the brands tested the majority of their products for potency while just 13 per cent tested the majority of their products for purity. 25 per cent of brands carried out no purity testing at all.
Leafreport’s 2021 market analysis solidified its earlier findings with the report showing that 60 per cent of 221 products sent for third-party testing did not match the labelled CBD strength. Just under half of these had CBD levels that differed front the label by more than 30 per cent. This week, the company released a further study which found that more than half of 52 tested CBD products currently marketed for sleep contained the wrong amounts of CBD, CBN, and/or melatonin.
“Frankly, the results of this research are shocking and continue to illustrate the need for a more transparent CBD industry,” said Gal Shapira, Product Manager at Leafreport. “Consumers need to know when they buy CBD products that there are certain quality standards being met. Leafreport exists to help these consumers make better-informed decisions about what they put into their bodies. We see this report as a critical service to help consumers ensure they buy products that actually work.”
In the US, some states require CBD products to undergo third-party testing before they can be sold on the market. But despite these rules being in place, they often go unenforced. Scott Mazza, founder of New York-based organic CBD producer Vitality CBD said that although the state has introduced rules surrounding labelling, third-party lab testing and extraction methods, there is no regulatory body ensuring that companies comply.
“New York really tried to come out with a lot of regulations but it’s nothing that’s ever been enforced; not in any way shape or form,” Mazza told Cannabis Wealth. “The [state] tried to come out with certain labelling requirements [but] there’s no regulatory body that is checking any of the boxes. They’ve even tried to ban certain methods of extracting CBD but I know people around here that are still using extraction methods that technically aren’t compliant.
“We adhere to all the [regulations] to a tee, but then you’ll go around locally to a lot of CBD stores, hemp stores and vape shops and you’ll see companies in there that are completely disregarding any of the rules or regulations that just came out.”
Inesa Ponomariovaite, founder of Chicago-based producer of full-spectrum CBDa products, Nesas Hemp, echoed Mazza’s view. Before launching her ‘Beyond Organic’ full-spectrum CBDa hemp extract, Ponomariovaite travelled across the US and Europe to independently test the products that were currently on the market. She said she was “devastated” by what she found.
“I had to really investigate because the [industry] is still not regulated,” Ponomariovaite said. “Anybody who wants to be in the cannabis business can be. You can do whatever you want and nobody’s going to stop you and you’re not even going to [face] a penalty. I saw heavy metals, I saw organic certified farms sharing soil with cornfields. We have this major industry growing and who knows what is in these bottles.”
While the industry remains unregulated, Mazza said consumers should not be afraid to reach out to the companies they are buying from and ask for proof of lab results and growing conditions.
“I think the more information a company can provide and the more transparent they are about the products that they’re selling is a positive sign that they’re being honest and selling what they claim to be selling,” he said.
