Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Mike Luce, co-founder of High Yield Insights, one of the cannabis industry’s first marketing and strategy firms. This is the second of his two-part series on the mysterious world–and spurious marketing–of CBD, a product I’m sure you’ve seen advertised and made available nearly everywhere.
If CBD is so popular, why don’t we know more about it? This post, the second in a two-part series, examines consumer perceptions and the not-always-aligned realities of CBD products on the market. For consumers seeking the many positive purported benefits of the suddenly fashionable cannabis compound, there’s little easily-accessible information. Worse yet, we may be witnessing an explosion of misunderstanding and misinformation as an epidemic of lung injuries continues across the US.
Poisoned by black market products, nearly a thousand people have fallen ill across the country. As of this writing, illegal e-cigarettes have been implicated in at least 14 deaths. In over forty states, people have been struck by severe lung injuries from vaping, often at frightening speed. While research is still underway to isolate the specific substance or substances responsible, many hold black market THC e-cigarettes responsible. Something changed in the composition of the oil used by many black marketeers to fill vaporizer cartridges. Initial evidence suggests contamination by fungicides and the misuse of thickening agents to disguise diluted product. (I wrote about the outbreak in mid-September.) Either as a direct result, or in some unknown interaction with tobacco e-cigarettes as well, vaping has been turned deadly.
Yet the latest fad to hit the