“A product showing the CBD strength in percentage may be stating the amount of hemp oil, rather than the actual CBD content. We recommend that you always check the ingredients. CBD from unpurified hemp, or hemp oil, results in a weaker product and poor taste.”
Buying CBD Oil From a Reputable Supplier
Why Buying the Right CBD Oil Matters
You’ve spent some time shopping online for CBD oil, and you’ve found tremendous variation in price from one vendor to another. How is it that the same product can be so much cheaper from some vendors than others? The answer, of course, is that the product isn’t necessarily the same. CBD products can differ greatly in how they’re sourced, extracted and made into finished products – and before you buy CBD oil from any vendor, you owe it to yourself to find out as much as you can about where the product comes from.
These are the vital questions that you should be asking about any CBD product before you buy it. If you can’t find the answers to these questions on a CBD seller’s website, we’d suggest shopping around for a different, more reputable seller.
Consider the Hemp Source
CBD Oil Comes From the World’s Most Useful Plant
CBD oil is an extract made from industrial hemp, a cultivar of the cannabis sativa plant. Industrial hemp differs from the cannabis sativa or cannabis indica plants grown as marijuana in that industrial hemp is bred to contain almost no THC. While marijuana is grown – often illegally – for recreational use, industrial hemp is grown under licence by farmers around the world for its strong fibres, oil-rich seeds and CBD content.
The Problem: There Isn’t Enough Hemp
The problem with industrial hemp is that, in many western nations, acquiring the necessary permits to grow it is a difficult process despite the fact that it has no recreational use. Hemp is in high demand, and there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. Many CBD producers solve that problem by looking to the east. Chinese farmers grow a reported 20 percent of the world’s hemp, and its easy for western companies to obtain ready-to-process hemp from China through import/export websites.
OK CBD Uses USA-Grown Organic Hemp
At OK CBD, we source our industrial hemp from organic farms in the United States. Our farmers must abide by the strict standards that the United States government has established for organic goods, and those standards help to ensure that our products are not tainted with dangerous synthetic pesticides. Before you buy any CBD product, make sure that you know its origin.
“Made In” Doesn’t Tell You Everything
When you browse the various CBD products available online, you should remain mindful of the fact that the phrase “Made In” doesn’t tell you everything about a product. A CBD product can be made in the United Kingdom from hemp grown in China. If a CBD vendor’s website doesn’t clearly state the source of the hemp, you should ask yourself whether the vendor might have something to hide.
Consider the Production Facility and Method
CBD Extraction Requires a Solvent
To get CBD out of hemp plant material, you need a solvent – and that’s another potential point of concern with CBD oil because many of the solvents capable of stripping CBD oil from hemp are harsh chemicals that you would never want to consume. Butane, hexane and ethanol are three common solvents used in hemp extraction.
The Safest Way to Extract CBD Oil
You don’t want to take your CBD oil with a side of hexane, so it’s a good thing that solvent-free CBD extraction also exists. Supercritical CBD extraction uses heat and pressure to force carbon dioxide through hemp plant material. The CO2 extracts the CBD oil from the hemp before dissipating harmlessly into the air.
The resulting CBD oil is extremely pure and contains absolutely no solvent. The only problem with CO2 CBD extraction is that it requires expensive equipment; getting a CO2-based CBD extraction facility up and running requires a major investment. At OK CBD, we perform our CBD extraction right here in the United Kingdom in an ISO7-compliant laboratory.
Importers May Not Know How Their CBD Oil Is Made
Extracting CBD oil from hemp plant material with carbon dioxide requires expensive laboratory equipment. Extracting CBD with a solvent, on the other hand, requires little more than the solvent and a bucket. As you might imagine, then, solvent-based CBD extraction is particularly common in developing nations. The longer the chain of custody between the hemp grower and the CBD seller becomes, the less the seller will know about the origin and extraction method of the CBD. You can’t just find industrial hemp on import/export websites; you can also find bottles of finished CBD oil. Merchants can simply slap their labels on the bottles and start selling. You can bet, though, that a reseller of imported CBD oil will know little to nothing about the oil’s provenance.
Consider the Consistency and Potency of the Product
What’s In Your CBD Oil?
There are two types of CBD oil. The first is the product that we described above – an oil extracted from whole, natural hemp plant material. Because it’s a whole-plant extract, it is a full-spectrum extract expressing the qualities of hemp’s many beneficial compounds. Hemp contains hundreds of plant-based compounds called terpenes, and many of those terpenes may work synergistically with CBD to achieve a heightened effect. When you use a whole-plant CBD oil, you’re getting all of those compounds.
There is also, however, a second type of CBD oil product. Once you’ve extracted CBD oil from hemp, you can further refine the oil to capture just the CBD and nothing else. At that point, you’ll have CBD isolate. CBD isolate is a fat-soluble white powder containing more than 99 percent CBD. Since CBD isolate is very light and is almost entirely CBD by weight, it’s a great solution for importers who want to sell CBD oil. Why import gallons of oil when you could import a small package of powder and add the oil to it yourself? Many of the companies that sell “CBD oil” are actually selling CBD isolate with hempseed oil added. While the product certainly contains CBD, it contains none of hemp’s other beneficial terpenes.
CBD Oil Is a Plant-Based Product With Natural Variations
When a company sells a full-spectrum CBD oil, they’re selling a natural plant product that’s going to have some variations from one batch to the next. When you use CBD to treat specific conditions, though, you don’t want to deal with natural variations – you want consistent CBD content and predictable results. It is vital, then, for the CBD content on the bottle to actually be accurate. At OK CBD, we routinely test our CBD oil to confirm that the CBD content is exactly what we print on the bottle – and that our products are free of impurities.
OK CBD products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or malady. They are not to be used by persons under the age of 18, during pregnancy or when breastfeeding. If in doubt, check with your GP before taking CBD oil.
