When I was living in Western Massachusetts in 2017, the state was undergoing the early stages of cannabis legalization. The way I noticed this most as a consumer was that businesses were all playing their cards right to avoid scrutiny. This meant that even though I could buy CBD legally in the state, food co-ops, grocery stores, and herb shops were deshelving the products quickly and waiting for different ones to replace them. Selling such a misunderstood product as a simple sleep aid that also features a well-recognized pot leaf on the box wasn’t always easy, one clerk explained to me. The smart shops sent their health or wellness person to trainings on the plant, its cultivation, and medicinal properties. I noticed these trainings were popping up everywhere marketed toward average Joes like me, too. I felt like I learned all I needed to know, as a result of me asking “how do you know so much about CBD?”, to my local grocery store vitamin aisle worker.
CBD is Legal Everywhere
As the state got closer to legalization, the CBD oil returned to every alternative market and even mainstream food stores with a vengeance. There were so many to choose from that it was hard to know what to do. I kept hearing customers ask the person in the body care section of the food coop if CBD was legal. Soon after, they placed a kiosk with one of those newly trained employees present at all times. Their only job was to answer CBD and other cannabis-related questions right in the middle of the aisle. I had questions about the different products that they were selling. These included why I should choose one brand over another, and if it best to support local vendors (knowing that up to now we could not support local products only local vendors of imported products) or if it was best to go with one of the bigger names in the business. It turns out these are pretty common questions for consumers of a variety of products, especially with so much misinformation out there about all cannabis products, including CBD.
Growing CBD Thoughtfully
What the person behind the kiosk counter told me has stayed with me for years. Even though I am tech-savvy, I’m an old fashioned buyer. I like to talk to someone in person and hold the product to feel like I really know what I’m getting myself into, rather than scale the endless links on a Google search and connect to a lot of unreliable sources, before reaching helpful information. They reinforced that different CBD brands and doses have different impacts on different bodies. I mean, surprise surprise–that’s kind of true about everything, right? But I also learned about how unregulated CBD oil can be and that the growing process around the cannabis plant itself is critical to the health quality of the CBD oil. For example, just like shopping for vegetables, we don’t always take into account the fact that the soil and pesticide use play a big role in determining how much beta carotene is in the carrot, but it does.
It is critical for me to buy CBD oil that is from a non-GMO source and grown with organic practices. When using something medicinally, it is imperative to ensure that goods don’t have trace heavy metals or other toxins that could add to whatever problems you may be needing the medicine for in the first place. Third-party purity testing is always a good thing to look for as well so that the product has undergone the necessary screening for unwanted toxins. When buying locally, it’s important to prioritize getting the information about the quality of the environment in which the plant has grown, and that there are no unknown additives. As of today, it is hard to ignore the newly discovered potential harm in vaping. It seems like a warning to us all to look closer into the ingredients of the products we consume. Sometimes it is as easy as walking into a store and asking. Clearly, the benefits of CBD can be amazing if the plant was cultivated and processed in a way that allows for it to effectively do its job. Buying products locally that adhere to these standards is the way to go, even if the product is not from the place you are buying it from.
