he shipping boxes arrive several times a week at Mother Earth Natural Health with trial products from suppliers trying to break into Michigan’s flourishing CBD business.
Shop owner Arianna Welsh said she turns nearly all of them away, choosing to limit her stock to those oils, gummies, bath bombs, dog biscuits, coffee, soaps and smokables that are verified by independent lab testing. Sometimes, she said she even visits the processors, another step in building a quality inventory.
“I want to make sure my products aren’t being made in someone’s garage,” she told Bridge.
“What’s listed here,” she said, turning over a bottle of CBD vegan gummies “needs to be inside.”
Hers is a legitimate concern.
CBD products now line the counters at Michigan gas stations, hair salons, video stores and even major retailers such as Kroger, with virtually no laws regulating what’s being sold.
That leaves consumers to sort through health claims based on packaging, word-of-mouth testimonials, experimentation and ingredients labels that often turn out to be inaccurate.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) oversees production and licensing of industrial hemp, from which CBD is derived, but neither MDARD nor the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services tests CBD products to make sure the contents match the labels.
All of which leaves many health professionals a bit unsettled.
“The brain is very complex — more complex than you can even imagine,” said Jed Magen, a practicing psychiatrist and chairman of the department of psychiatry in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University. With CBD, “there are no guarantees.”
Here is a primer on what you should know about CBD before you buy:
