When you hear that Martha Stewart is getting involved in creating CBD products, you know without a doubt that hemp has moved out of the underground and into the mainstream. That considered, it’s only logical that everyone and their dog is going to try and cash in on the cannabinoid craze.
Unfortunately, this surge in CBD’s popularity, combined with lack of oversight by any regulatory agency (such as the FDA) created the perfect recipe for a mob of unscrupulous vendors that sell CBD of questionable content and quality.
We believe that hemp CBD has powerful healing potential – but you have to take one that’s guaranteed to be pure and of the highest quality; otherwise, you will end up wasting money, or worse – poisoning yourself.
We compiled this list of questions to ask when you are going to shop for CBD, to ensure that you acquire only the best that hemp has to offer.
1) Where is the hemp cultivated?
Knowing the growing region of your hemp is vital, for more than one reason. First, under the guidelines of the 2018 Farm Bill, only CBD from hemp grown in the U.S. under the strict supervision of the USDA is legal. Many companies continue to extract CBD from hemp imported from countries like China and India – which makes their products not only illegal, but likely contaminated with heavy metals.
This scenario leads us into the other reason why this question is so important to ask – knowing the area the hemp was grown in allows you to determine what the soil quality might be. While many growing regions are known for rich, fertile land, an equal amount have soil that is full of environmental pollutants from industrial runoff or toxic agricultural practices.
Hemp is so good at extracting pollution from the soil that it was used by researchers in the early 1990s at Chernobyl, where scientist Ilya Raskin coined the term ‘phytoremediation.’
