Looking back, 2019 was the year of cannabidiol (CBD) in the cannabis industry. CBD continued to make its way into countless consumer products, from sodas to sports bras. The CBD craze was a long time coming: we began covering that cannabinoid back in 2015, when industry began promoting CBD products in earnest and the FDA
The hemp industry is up in arms over the USDA’s interim rules establishing a domestic hemp program. As of this writing, you can find some 900 comments published on regulations.gov. The din of complaints about the deleterious effect of several rules caused Senator Chuck Shumer to send a letter on December 3 to U.S. Agriculture
As we have previously discussed, the sale and marketing of hemp-infused cannabidiol (“Hemp-CBD”) cosmetics, such as salves, lotions and creams (collectively “Topicals”), present the lowest risk for businesses wishing to enter this booming industry. We have quite a few clients pursuing this path, from small-batch manufacturers to national retail outlets. Generally, a Topical may be
If you follow state-by-state legal cannabis legalization, you’re aware that despite the federal illegality of cannabis, certain federal agencies police the cannabis industry like they do any other legal industry. For example, the NLRB has been known to go after cannabis companies engaged in hostile workplace conduct and the Department of Treasury contemplates banking services to
We’ve written extensively on this blog about industrial hemp-derived CBD products, including CBD comestibles, CBD pet products, CBD in alcohol, and CBD topicals. Of all these categories of goods, the CBD industry seems to have reached a consensus that CBD topical products present the lowest level of risk for businesses, hence companies like CVS, Walgreens,
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) released its interim final rule for the production of hemp under the 2018 Farm Bill. Although these rules are not final, they will go into effect once published in the Federal Register, at which point a 60-day public comment period will begin. Upon the publication of the
I recently attended two events in Utah headlined by the United Natural Products Alliance (“UNPA”) where its President, Loren Israelsen, discussed the voluminous public comments received by the FDA in response its latest round of questions regarding how over-the-counter cannabis extracts like CBD should be regulated. Israelsen provided numerous takeaways for UNPA members and their
The passage of the 2018 Farm Bill and the legalization of hemp and hemp-derived products has sparked strong business interest from foreign stakeholders. For the past few months, our firm has received numerous inquiries from existing and prospective clients about the legality of importing the agricultural crop and its derived products, particularly hemp-derived CBD (“Hemp-CBD”),
In a recent 13-part series, we reviewed the stance of each of the 2020 presidential candidates’ on marijuana, and we assigned each candidate a letter grade corresponding with our analysis. Our grading criteria is as follows: Current stance on marijuana: What have they recently said about marijuana legislation? When did they adopt this stance? We
A few weeks ago, I wrote a Hemp/CBD litigation forecast in which I predicted that at some point a CBD company will make use of the Lanham Act by claiming that a competitor is engaging in false or misleading advertising. (See here). In that post I promised to go into the Lanham Act in further
