Can you Buy Real or Safe CBD on Amazon?
December 09, 2019
Great question and one that needs to be answered quickly!
There is so much crap CBD product on the market and if you're like us, you buy everything on Amazon.
Is CBD fair game to buy this way?
After all, this goes in your body. We're not talking about light bulbs or sneakers.
In fact, Nike just broke off a deal with selling via Amazon….why?
The back story is this...too many knock off's of their product available through Amazon.
That's for shoes...no big deal besides getting ripped off and maybe some misspelling of brands (NIko's???).
What about CBD?
We'll look at these questions that come up often (there may be some overlap):
- What CBD is available on Amazon?
- What "CBD" is sold on Amazon?
- Is it safe to buy CBD on Amazon?
- Is it legal to buy CBD on Amazon?
- Is Amazon hemp oil the same thing as CBD?
- Is CBD allowed on Amazon?
- What is the best CBD on Amazon?
Let's jump into it.
You'll be surprised by the answers.
What CBD is available on Amazon?
This is really the crux of the question that leads to all others.
Technically, NONE.
Amazon does not allow the sales of CBD at the time of this writing (11/19) since there is still a gray area on CBD at the Federal level.
Yes, it's treated by the FDA as a supplement and legal to ship to all States but big companies like Amazon (and banks) are waiting for definitive approvals.
That's right...Amazon does not allow CBD sales on their platform.
It's right in their guidelines for allowed products:
- Listings for products containing cannabidiol (CBD) are prohibited, including but not limited to:
- Full-spectrum hemp oil
- Rich hemp oil
- Products that have been identified as containing CBD by LegitScript
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=G200164490&
What's interesting is that many people search for CBD in Amazon and a host of products come up.
Well...if it's illegal to sell CBD on Amazon, what exactly are those products.
Oh...get ready….the confusion circus is in town!
What "CBD" is sold on Amazon?
It's not CBD.
It's usually some version of hemp oil.
What's the difference between hemp oil and CBD?
We've written entire reviews such as hemp oil versus CBD for anxiety or what exactly is CBD.
Essentially, hemp oil is the raw oil extract from the cannabis plant.
It's like when you press olives down to get olive oil.
In that extract, you should have some CBD.
How much?
Great question.
When we asked one of the biggest (legitimate) vendors of hemp oil (millions of bottles sold at very high prices), they couldn't or wouldn't give the mg's of CBD.
Our estimate is about 8-10 mgs per 1 ounce (30 ml) bottle of hemp oil.
Good luck with that.
You're essentially buying very expensive oil.
We actually get pretty angry when we see what big companies are asking for hemp oil.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
We go through the whole full spectrum versus CBD isolate argument here based on research.
Speaking of research...google "hemp oil NIH".
National Institute of Health (real research).
What comes up???
Cannabidiol (the long name for CBD).
Hemp oil is probably a rip off unless you're paying a few dollars for a 30 ml bottle.
It really shouldn't be more than olive coconut oil.
We'll look at some of the top sellers on Amazon when people search for CBD to expose just what's going on there.
The bigger question is this one.
Is it safe to buy CBD on Amazon?
We already addressed if it's even CBD, to begin with.
It's not.
So...are the hemp oil options safe to buy?
We looked at the #1 seller of hemp oil on Amazon.
We then went to their website to look for 3rd party testing.
We couldn't find it on the site. We couldn't find it on Amazon.
This is mandatory for CBD or hemp oil.
It should confirm the following:
- No THC
- No pesticides
- No heavy metals
- No solvents
- No bacteria
- No mold
Look...hemp is a remarkable soil mediator. This means that it can pull all kinds of stuff out of the soil.
In fact, they'll use hemp to "clean" ammunition fields of contaminants.
We MUST have 3rd party testing.
Good luck with that for hemp oil.
You can not put something in your body that doesn't have 3rd party testing available readily through Amazon.
This isn't just an issue for CBD or hemp oil.
It's a long-running problem with Amazon and it's hard to buy anything going into your body or on your skin through Amazon....in our humble opinion.
There are too many instances of Chinese companies selling exact knock-offs with bad stuff across markets.
It's estimated that 54% of sales on Amazon are from 3rd parties.
There's no oversight there.
Fake and even dangerous supplements on Amazon is not new.
“We are aware that some counterfeit Align product was sold on Amazon via third parties,” Mollie Wheeler, a spokesperson for Procter & Gamble.
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/
It looked identical down to the pill markings.
This is an issue that's only growing with the ease of international commerce:
A 2016 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development8pegged the counterfeit market at $461 billion a year in 2013. By 2016 that number had skyrocketed to $509 billion9 — two and a half times what it was just eight years earlier in 2008, at $200 billion a year.
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/amazon-admits-it-sold-fake-supplements
There's enough bad CBD on the market by itself and unfortunately, Amazon is not the right source as long as multiple 3rd parties can sell a product.
We must have 3rd party testing and really, it should be readily available online like here.
This isn't just an issue for Amazon sales though.
One recent report looked at three memory supplements: two of them contained none of the active ingredients and one of those contained unidentifiable chemicals that raise serious questions about its safety.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/whats-in-your-supplements-2019021515946
Another large study found that about 20% of the tested supplements had ingredients not listed on the bottle.
Another related question.
Is it legal to buy CBD on Amazon?
No.
Amazon does not allow sales of CBD at the time of this writing.
You'll only find hemp oil with dubious reviews, supposed benefits (the research at NIH is on CBD, not hemp oil).
CBD is probably one of the biggest things to hit the wellness market in decades.
Just look at the research on CBD and anxiety alone.
It's staggering.
The same can't be said for hemp oil. We're not saying it's bad but the studies for anxiety were looking at 300 mg of CBD as a peak dosage for neurogenesis (brain repair) for anxiety.
You'll never get there at 8 mg per dropper with hemp oil.
Actually, you might, but the sheer volume of oil and cost makes it a very bad choice.
That's why we have bottles with 1000, 2000, and even 6000 mg.
It's based on research such as with our how many mg of CBD or how many mgs of CBD for anxiety.
Research needs to drive this market or the snake-oil salesmen will come out in droves.
So...Amazon bans the sales of CBD products.
Anything you find on Amazon that purports to sell CBD is likely fraudulent and more importantly, potentially unsafe.
It definitely isn't legal.
If a company is going to try to trick people into buying their product by piggybacking onto CBD's popularity, that doesn't build confidence in the safety
Is Amazon hemp oil the same thing as CBD?
To some extent, the sellers of hemp oil on Amazon are taking advantage of people's lack of understanding of the relationship between hemp oil and CBD.
We go into it with detail at our CBD versus hemp oil for anxiety review.
Hemp oil (if clean, 3rd party tested, etc) isn't bad.
There are lots of great Omega oils in there.
The issue for roughly 40-60% of the population is that all that plant material is likely to cause a nasty allergy or histamine issue.
That's literally the reason we started IndigoNaturals to begin with.
We had tried 3-4 of the biggest brands and had bad histamine responses to them.
With CBD Isolate, all of that went away.
Now, most CBD brands are pushing full-spectrum (see CBD isolate versus full-spectrum) not knowing this histamine effect.
It's a shame because many people will miss out on the benefits of CBD as a result.
Hemp oil is akin to olive oil and should be priced accordingly.
The brands selling 1 ounce of hemp oil for $20+ are just ripping people off.
We purposely sell our CBD for the lowest cost per mg of CBD we can (generally between 3-6 cents depending on size).
We may have already answered the next question but just in case.
Is CBD allowed on Amazon?
CBD is specifically prohibited in Amazon's seller rules.
Listings for products containing cannabidiol (CBD) are prohibited, including but not limited to:
- Full-spectrum hemp oil
- Rich hemp oil
- Products that have been identified as containing CBD by LegitScript
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=G200164490&
Look at #5.
That's very curious since the brands of hemp oil on Amazon as we write this show ridiculous claims.
30,000 mg of hemp oil.
Basically, they're saying the bottle is filled with hemp oil (1 ounce = approx 28,000 mgs).
Big deal.
It's like buying olive oil in terms of mg's (100,000???)
That's a bad sign right away...they're looking to mislead you.
That being said, the big seller at 1000 mg is even worse!
If a 1-ounce bottle is almost 30,000 mg, and they're only offering 1000 mg of hemp oil...what in God's name is the other 29,000 mg?
Some low-grade oil. Maybe olive oil? Coconut oil? Seriously...very fascinating.
What a rip off!
1000 mg of CBD is very different than 1000 mg of hemp oil.
As we showed above, a bottle of hemp oil from a very large CBD brand had about 8 mg of CBD per dropper.
That's about 240 mg of CBD per bottle. That's the best case.
This was one of the biggest CBD brands and we'll assume the full bottle was actually hemp oil.
That means a company selling millions of bottles is probably providing CBD at about .008 of the total product.
What about that 1000 mg of hemp oil above?
It probably has about 8-10 mg of CBD.
The generally accepted testing dosage for CBD is about 25-30 mg. You couldn't get that with a full bottle of their hemp oil.
In fact, it would take 3-4 bottles at around $12 each to get to just a testing dosage.
Goodness. See why we're angry?
Forget the research on:
- Sleep at 160 mg CBD daily.
- Neurogenesis at 300 mg.
- Public speaking and social anxiety at 600 mg
- Schizophrenia research at 800 mg
Good luck with those 100 bottles of the #1 seller at Amazon.
Hopefully, we've explained what's going on in the market...and Amazon's no different.
Another question we see.
What is the best CBD on Amazon?
You can't legally buy CBD on Amazon.
Instead, there's very expensive hemp oil.
If our 1000 mg of CBD is 6 cents per mg of CBD (cheaper options with larger 2000 or 6000 bottles), what about the #1 Amazon seller.
Get ready.
These options generally sell for around $12 for 1000 mg of hemp oil.
We estimated that there's about 8-10 mg of CBD probably in standard hemp oil.
So...that's about $1.20 per mg of CBD.
Let's compare….
- 6 cents per mg of CBD (with our 1000mg bottle)
- $1.20 per mg of CBD (not validated so we're being optimistic)
Those poor people (millions of them probably) are paying 20 times the amount for an untested, unverified product on a platform where contaminants and fake products are becoming a real issue.
Look...we buy almost everything on Amazon as a family.
We won't touch anything that goes into our bodies.
For supplements, we look to iHerb which has control as a wholesaler to buy from the major manufacturers.
Always work with a doctor or naturopath with any supplement!
The information provided here is not intended to treat an illness or substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from a qualified healthcare provider.