Pop Culture Says CBD Cures Everything—Here's What Scientists Say
Jonathan Duce entered Dion's, his neighborhood liquor store in Waltham, Massachusetts, walked past the wine and six-packs and headed straight for the gummy worms. At $69 for a jar of 25, they were more expensive than the Chateauneuf du Pape, but he didn't mind. His wife likes them, he says, because they help her sleep.
The gummies aren't just candy. Each one packs a 30-milligram wallop of cannabidiol, or CBD, a constituent of the cannabis plant, more commonly known as hemp, a cousin of marijuana. Dion's started selling CBD products four months ago and now one in every 15 people who walk in buys at least one of the store's 30 CBD products, which include tinctures, vaping cartridges, smokable "flower," capsules and lotions. "But gummies are our biggest mover," says Kristen Correia, who works behind the counter.
Duce, 54, prefers rubbing salve on his neck to relieve the stress of work. "We discovered CBD at a farmer's market a few months ago," he says." Instead of taking a prescription drug, I'd rather take something like this that comes from a plant."
Mass-market retailers like CVS, Walgreens and Krogers have already signed up to carry CBD products with Walmart said to be close behind them. CBD candies and other products have been widely available online and in tens of thousands of small stores across most states; and the entrance of large retailers is about to pour gas on that fire. Big Food and Beverage lurks in the wings with its own plans to inundate the world with CBD ice cream and beer. The Brightfield Group, a market research firm, projects that CBD annual sales in the U.S., now at $600 million, will grow by a factor of 40 to $23 billion by 2023.
Hardly anyone had heard of CBD three years ago, but now two-thirds of Americans are familiar with it, according to a recent Gallup survey. One in seven Americans use
