Okay, everyone loves Amazon – you can find something you want fast, it’s easy to order, and they offer free 2-day shipping; it’s a hard bargain to beat.
And with such a big name like Amazon, a percentage of our population will gladly buy anything they see for sale on the platform, if they want it bad enough. CBD oil and other so-called CBD-rich products, for example, are hugely sought after on today’s market.
The industry is just getting bigger, so it’s no surprise that consumers are trying to skip searching for the right brand and just use Amazon’s easier ranking and rating system to filter products until you’ve found the one for you.
Here’s the problem – Amazon strictly prohibits and forbids CBD products to be sold on their platform.
Instead, you’ll find countless fake and unsafe products sold by individuals using the platform instead of the Amazon brand itself. The products are worded in a way that tries to hide the fact that they’re just hemp products that contain virtually no CBD, other cannabinoids, terpenes, or anything else beneficial.
Why You Should Never Purchase CBD Oil on Amazon
The scam individuals pull on the Fortune 500 online store platform is the reason thousands across the nation are convinced that CBD is just a placebo, or that it outright doesn’t work. This leaves them to never want to try hemp-derived products again, when the right formula could’ve given them the boost they were actually looking for.
In most cases, CBD products have been shown to provide a plethora of great benefits not just for humans, but for pets, too. There’s a big difference between CBD products and hemp products, though.
Hemp products can just be made from the hemp seed – which contains virtually no cannabis compounds like terpenes and cannabinoids like CBD.
It’s just used as a regular health supplement, but most people order it thinking it will provide more than that. While it may have its own benefits, it doesn’t promote general wellness, help stabilize mood, reduce stress, or stimulate any of the other responses that CBD-rich products can.
Amazon Prohibits the Sale of CBD Oil
The company has never tried to hide the fact that they prohibit the sale of CBD oil or other CBD products on their platform. Per their restricted product list, they prohibits the following:
“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”
Before they were called out on it, they originally also mentioned that CBD was a Schedule I Controlled Substance. That part has been erased from the list, but CBD products still remain – even though the 2018 Farm Bill changed the legal definition of industrial hemp and legalized CBD derived from hemp in the process.
Now that cannabidiol isn’t a part of the Controlled Substances Act and CBD products that contain less than 0.3% THC are legal, why hasn’t Amazon changed or loosened up on their rules?
As the years continue, more will start to question the company as to whether it will ever get with the times. CBD’s legality has been in a weird gray area in years past, but the 2018 Farm Bill and further regulations and clarification since then have further steamrolled the industry forward.
Why Doesn’t Amazon Sell CBD Oil?
We tried to come up with the reasons why Amazon might not want to sell CBD products on their platform even though the industry is ripe with opportunity.
The best guess we have is that the company maintains this hard stance on hemp oil to avoid people that derive CBD oil from marijuana instead of hemp. Since CBD is the same molecule whether it’s extracted from one cannabis plant or the other, there’s not an easy way to babysit the market to ensure people aren’t including heavier THC infusions into their products. Marijuana and hemp oil look exactly the same, so there’s no way to tell just by looking.
The only way to tell the difference between hemp oil and marijuana oil would be to test it in a lab advanced enough to differentiate the two compounds, THC and CBD. To complicate the matter more, someone could water down a marijuana oil formula or refine it of THC, making it virtually impossible to tell the difference between that marijuana oil and a legal industrial hemp oil.
Finally, Amazon also has a hard rule against any THC in any products. So, even though the federal legal limit is 0.3% THC, Amazon would have to verify that it, in fact, contains 0% THC to abide by their own rules. This further complicates how Amazon could go about allowing CBD-rich products on their website.
I Found CBD Oil on Amazon, Though
Unfortunately, when you search “CBD oil” on Amazon you’ll still get over 20 pages of results. Most listings will claim they have the real deal, too – hemp seed oil rich in CBD, totally contains X number of milligrams per serving.
When you look closer, though, you’ll see the bottle only contains hemp extract. It doesn’t ever specify how much CBD is in the container – because there isn’t any. If there is, it’s not enough to promote any sort of general wellness or other benefits.
If a product listing happens to say, “CBD oil,” it just means they managed to slip through the cracks with Amazon for now, but they’ll be caught and removed eventually. It’s only a matter of time before the platform makes it even harder for tags to make fake products show up as easily as they do.
How to Tell if a CBD Product is Fake
Now that you have a fresh take on why you should never buy CBD oil on Amazon, let’s break it down further. No matter where you shop, we’re going to explain how you can tell if a so-called CBD product is fake or if it’s the real high-quality deal we’re after.
Look at the Product Label
First things first: look at the strength stated on the front of the bottle. Whether it says 100mg, 10,000mg or something in between, read what comes after it.
100mg CBD?
100mg Hemp Extract?
100mg Organic Full-Spectrum Hemp?
Does it just show the strength and then have nothing under that part of the label?
What comes after is what that strength represents – which means there’s a key difference in getting something that contains 100mg CBD and something that only contains 100mg hemp extract. You’re not looking at the advertised amount of CBD, you’re looking at the advertised amount of whatever they want you to see.
A proper CBD product will specify how much CBD is in the entire container on the front, then break down how much hemp extract and how much CBD you get in each serving on the back. For hemp seed products sold on Amazon, you only see the amount of hemp extract in each serving on the back – there’s no mention of how much CBD you get with each dose.
Third Party Testing
Here’s the deal: any reputable CBD brand worth anything in today’s market will have every batch of their CBD products tested rigorously through a third-party lab. This lab will confirm how much THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids the batch contains. This same lab or a specialized lab will also confirm the product is free of pesticides, heavy metals, solvents, and any other pollutants.
Here’s the bigger deal: any real reputable CBD brand will have all their lab results available, right on their website, available for the world to see. Why? Because they should care about transparency even more than their consumers.
A CBD brand that’s doing it right will offer a section on their web platform for you to check out the lab results for every batch of their products. Brands that sell hemp seed oil on Amazon don’t have access to lab reports or even a website to put those reports on, which is just another reason why they’re not a viable option.
Final Thoughts
As a last word of advice on how to tell if a CBD product is fake, beware of bogus reviews. The Internet is chock full of fake reviews, so really look through those 5-star gems and see what seems genuine. Better yet, go straight to the 1-star reviews – they’re far less likely to lie, and instead give you the real skinny on how well the product worked for them.
We hope we were able to help show you why you should never purchase CBD oil from Amazon. While they’re a beloved company that offers great saving, discounts, and again, that stellar 2-day free shipping, they don’t have the CBD-rich hemp-derived products we know and love. Instead of risking it all for a product that will almost surely not have the rich cannabinoids you need, check out some of our CBD brand reviews to go straight to a web platform that can genuinely help.