Browsing: CBD

Two powerful federal agencies have given some optimism to Colorado hemp farmers and CBD companies.

Late last month, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a temporary suspension of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s involvement with industrial hemp testing, a factor of federal hemp regulations that worried Colorado farmers for a variety of reasons. Days later, the Food and Drug Administration announced a more collaborative approach toward future CBD regulations with stakeholders of the hemp-derived CBD industry.

Hiring a retired athlete to push hemp products has gone from a trend to simply the way things are done in the emerging CBD industry. Now a Colorado CBD company has lured an NBA legend to do more than that.

Earlier this month, Hall of Fame basketball player Isiah Thomas (not to be confused with former Denver Nuggets guard Isaiah Thomas) announced that he had acquired a partnership in VESL Oils, a CBD product manufacturer based in Arvada.

Although most universities remain tepid about marijuana because it’s still prohibited federally, they’re more than happy to dive into hemp right now. The plant produces the same cannabinoids as marijuana — just at levels deemed acceptable by the federal government — and scientists are excited to learn more about CBD. But their research doesn’t end there, with interest in CBN, CBG and CBC also gaining steam.

Colorado CBD company Panacea Life Sciences recently donated $1.5 million to Colorado State University to create a laboratory that will study hemp and medical applications of cannabinoids, the unique molecules produced in the cannabis plant. To learn more about the program and why Panacea donated the money, we caught up with founder Leslie Buttroff.

If any sector has jumped on the CBD train, it’s the wellness community. CBD skin-care products, pills made for pain and soreness, and oils for anxiety are all readily available, and virtually always in the name of wellness.

Although the Food and Drug Administration still doesn’t want CBD considered an official medication, many users buy and use the hemp extract as part of their own health-care routines. Now, personal trainers, chiropractors and even tai chi instructors are starting to incorporate CBD gel capsules and edible oils into their programs, according to Sue Kartheiser. A personal trainer for nearly two decades, Kartheiser leads a program with Boulder-based Mandara in hopes of teaching other wellness coaches about CBD’s impact on health-focused lifestyles.

Kicco Koffie officially launched at the end of 2019, but the new CBD coffee company already wants to add something to its brand: global entrepreneurship.

“Our goal was to create a product that could service a need,” says Kicco co-founder Vincent Sarlos. “And that service would be a healthy coffee that tasted really good and can teach entrepreneurship all over the world.”

About six months ago, a Reddit user posted a photo of a sign pretending to peddle fake CBD-infused firewood. The Internet reacted as you’d expect, shaking a collective fist and rabble-rousing over something that was clearly intended as funny commentary concerning exactly what the Reddit readers thought they were mad about: CBD is being used and abused.

Even if the Internet’s anger was misplaced (big surprise) and we haven’t reached the point of CBD-infused firewood yet — that we know of — there’s no dearth of dumb cash grabs by companies slapping some CBD on it. Earlier this year, we spotted a hot dog stand (at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, of all places) advertising franks infused with 5 milligrams of the stuff. Carl’s Jr. did something similar as a 4/20 stunt in Denver, adding a whopping 4.2 milligrams into a special sauce for a special burger.

As America’s knowledge about the plant grows, the range of subjects our Stoner handles have expanded. While most of the questions we received in previous years asked such things as how to roll a joint or if it’s possible to boof marijuana (it is, but be careful), 2019 queries ventured into slightly more intellectual subjects, such as the recent vaping health crisis, or what the point of useless “indica” and “sativa” designations really is.

As we enter a new year full of unknown and new mysteries, here are five of our most interesting and popular Ask a Stoner questions in 2019.

Remember 2012? Peyton Manning had started his first season with the Broncos, and none of us knew jack about CBD. Seven years later, most of us still know jack about CBD, but at least we recognize how ignorant we are about that and other cannabis compounds.

The letters CBC, CBG and CBN probably look like acronyms for Canadian broadcasting entities to anyone outside of scientists and pot nerds, but they’re actually lesser-known molecular fruits of the cannabis plant. And with hemp’s recent legalization, we’re hearing a lot more about these “new” cannabinoids and their medical and wellness potential. We recently caught up with scientist and former hemp grower Devin Alvarez, CEO of CBD company Straight Hemp, to learn more about this alphabet soup of cannabis.

Songwriter and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder has joined the throngs of musicians – from Willie Nelson to Nathaniel Rateliff – who are getting into the cannabis, CBD and hemp fields.

But instead of launching a strain named after himself, Tedder is putting out an “all-new hemp extract sparkling water” called Mad Tasty that promises to bring “wellness to the masses in the tastiest way yet.”

Many American farmers were handed seeds of opportunity in October, when the United States Department of Agriculture released its much-anticipated regulations for farming hemp. The new federal rules came nearly a year after Congress legalized hemp farming, and almost half a decade after the Colorado Department of Agriculture established its own program for farming hemp. And this state’s rules don’t exactly line up with the ones just announced by the feds.

Two years after voters approved Amendment 64, legalizing recreational marijuana, Colorado decided to opt into the 2014 Farm Bill, a federal law that allowed states to create pilot programs for hemp licensing. As a result, Colorado is now one of the largest producers of hemp in the country. While every Colorado farmer growing hemp will probably have to change a few things once the federal regulations take hold, those same regulations also bring credibility to an industry essentially stuck in a federal gray area, according to Corey Cox, an attorney with Vicente Sederberg who represents clients in Colorado’s hemp industry.

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