The FDA seems to have been largely unprepared for the consequences of the passage of the Farm Bill from 2018 and its resulting deregulation of CBD. The bill legalized the farming and processing of hemp and hemp products, meaning that CBD was taken off the list of controlled substances and is now a legal substance.

The CBD market immediately exploded on a massive level, and new products are coming out all the time. Thousands of brands have flooded the internet, consumers are purchasing the best CBD gummies faster than suppliers can make them, and the CBD market is set to be worth $22 billion or more within the next couple of years.

A Lack of Oversight for the CBD Gummies Market

While consumers rejoiced and companies cashed in, the FDA scrambled to figure out the best way to handle this new health and wellness craze. Soon after the Farm Bill passed, they released a statement indicating that the regulation of CBD was getting passed over to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics department. The FD&C then released its own statement indicating that CBD was not approved as a food additive, supplement, or curative treatment, leaving CBD to be regulated as a cosmetic (which are famously not particularly regulated).

The government agency responsible for consumer safety related to products we ingest and slather onto our skin later clarified that their main focus of enforcement with CBD products would be toward companies that market their products to minors, make false medical claims, and use unsafe manufacturing practices (though this part is a bit ambiguous).

The USDA does closely monitor the farming and harvesting of the hemp used in CBD, but that is only for hemp grown in the United States. Companies that use hemp grown outside the US, therefore, are not subject to very much oversight at all. The source country of the hemp imposes its own rules, which can be far more lax than the USDA, and the CBD gummies themselves are regulated about as much as a tube of lipstick or bottle of shampoo.

Dangerous Results

Since the federal government seems to have washed its hands of any responsibility for ingestible CBD products, misrepresented products are rampant. Of course there are plenty of reputable CBD gummies brands on the market, but they are nearly indistinguishable from the bogus brands.

The hemp used to make the CBD in these products may have been grown in polluted soil, irrigated with contaminated water, and sprayed with dangerous pesticides and fertilizers not intended for use on plants meant for human consumption. Consumers who use these products run the risk of exposure to toxic chemicals and heavy metals.

The CBD itself may not have been tested by a third-party lab, or the results may have been falsified. One study found that up to 70 percent of the packaging for CBD gummies had false labeling. When companies do not invest in third-party testing for every batch of CBD gummies, they do not actually know the amount of CBD, THC, or heavy metals that are present in their products.

If the federal government will not regulate CBD gummies, oils, and other ingestible products, and disreputable companies continue to cut corners, taking advantage of people looking to improve their wellbeing, then how are consumers supposed to know what is safe and what is not? Some discouraged consumers have turned from CBD because they are concerned for their safety. Others do their best to research a product and hope for the best. But what if there was a better way?

Blockchain is the Solution

Most people only associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. While decentralized currency represents a portion of what blockchain can support, there are so many other functionalities for the emerging technology.

With blockchain, a package of data and every transaction related to that data gets stored in a “block.” Any time a new transaction happens (the data is edited), a new block forms on the chain, and it is timestamped and connected to every previous block of data related to the original block. This means that no matter which transactions take place or how the data is edited, every historical version is saved and timestamped. Nothing can be altered or deleted.

The security of blockchain is robust because all that data is not saved in one centralized location, but rather across a peer-to-peer network of servers. Any time new data is entered or anything is edited, access must be authenticated and verified across every single node on the network. This makes it virtually impossible to tamper with anything on the blockchain.

Blockchain to Regulate CBD

At this point, you may be wondering how in the world blockchain would be useful in solving the CBD regulation problem. Here is what some blockchain companies Farms are already doing to make CBD gummies like these from Verma Farms safer for everyone:

Data tracking starts with the seeds. A block with seed data for a crop, including strain and country of origin is added to the chain. When the seeds are planted, the GPS coordinates of the plot are noted, and AI technology tracks everything about the growing process. Growing conditions including weather and rainfall, and anything the plants are sprayed with, get recorded.

Everything about the entire process from seed to sale, including third-party lab results, is tracked in this manner. Consumers simply scan the QR code on their package and they will have access to the entire cycle of their products. When CBD gummies are created with this level of transparency, people can be confident that what they are getting is safe, and that the labeling is accurate.

With the federal government turning a blind eye to the fraud that is happening in the CBD industry, blockchain is a technology that helps reputable brands self-regulate, keeping consumers safe and healthy while using the products they love.