You get what you pay for” is a phrase that I often use when talking about fashion, food, and CBD. CBD prices can range from moderate, expensive, to really expensive depending on dosing, product size, and other ingredients added to the product such as cannabinoids and terpenes. These factors cumulatively lead to vast differences in the quality of each product, which really matters.
Testing
Testing is vital. Cannabis/Hemp is a really porous plant and absorbs anything in the surrounding soil. Hemp is an enviro regulator, which means it can be used to absorb toxins and clean the earth e.g. hemp plants are actually being used at Chernobyl to clean up toxic waste. However, this also means that if you are purchasing a cheap CBD product that came from plants grown in poor conditions, it may have absorbed chemicals, fungus, and pesticides of the soil it was grown in.
When purchasing CBD, you want to look to ensure that lab testing was done.
Testing is something that can add a lot of cost to a CBD product but is critical to ensure that you obtain a quality product. Testing has to be done on multiple plants and products to confirm that the amount of CBD and which terpenes are present is accurate, AND to see if there are any heavy metals, pesticides, bacteria, or fungus in the product. This analysis needs to be run on every product and strain of plant, and the batches have to be run multiple times—so this process can easily cost a company six to seven figures per year.
Again, I can’t stress enough how important it is to check for third-party lab testing. 88% of the CBD market is fraudulent. Equilibria has made its COAs (Certificate of Analysis) public and easy to obtain. This practice should be everywhere (it is not), but by publicly sharing their COAs, Equilibria is showing they have nothing to hide and that they have a high quality product.
Different forms of CBD
Hemp-based CBD is sold in various forms: Full Spectrum, Broad Spectrum, and Isolate. Full-spectrum works the best because it includes some THC (less than 0.3%) and usually includes more cannabinoids and terpenes. THC Cannabis CBD is more expensive than hemp-based CBD due to the cultivation and additional THC that is found in these products. CBD isolate is typically the most expensive; it contains no THC and is the hardest to extract and purify.
Extraction Methods
There are a variety of CBD extraction methods that affect the final product—12 or more different methods to be more specific. The cost and quality vary depending on what the producer wants extracted from the hemp. Some methods are better than others and again the choice depends on what the producer and grower are hoping to achieve. This can cost anywhere from $100.00 to $10,000.
Wide Dosing Range of CBD
CBD dosing varies from 5 mg per day all the way up to 1800 mg. In the literature for some chronic conditions, starting doses typically begin at 125 mg, but for other disease processes the suggested starting dose may go all the way up 1200 mg a day.
Therefore, if you require higher dosing and need a more potent product, then that higher quality product will cost more. If you see a product advertising higher concentrations of CBD at a price that is too good to be true, then it is likely fraudulent because there is a baseline wholesale price for real quality CBD and it is costly. Other factors affecting the price of a CBD product include the quality of the hemp, whether it has THC in it, and the carrier oil or type of product it is being used in.
Legal and Regulatory Hurdles
Hemp is newly legal, but most regulators and corporations do not understand the difference between Hemp CBD and Cannabis with THC. This drives up the cost for every business in the cannabis world, from hemp growers to ancillary services like mine. At every turn, there are extra hurdles for those of this in the business and that makes things really expensive and time consuming. For example, banking and credit card processing continues to be difficult in the CBD business arena. I work as a nurse and consultant that does not sell any actual CBD products, just my expertise and education, but I have been kicked off both Stripe and Paypal in the last 9 months and have to explore alternative payment receipt services. “High Risk” banks and processors charge VERY high fees. So just doing business in anything CBD related can cost 20% more than owning another type of business. In addition, since the 2018 Farm bill there have been many regulatory hoops for companies to jump through to obtain sought after certifications. On top of that, proper labeling can be expensive with yet even more hopes to jump through.
There is good news though! The price of CBD should be dropping in the long run. As the market gets more familiar with to CBD producers and hemp farms, and the stigma surrounding cannabis begins to fade, there will be more acceptance for ancillary business services and a lot less confusion about what CBD is and where it is allowed.
Again, if your CBD product is too cheap, that should be a red flag. That indicates to me that the farming practices may not be clean, the products aren’t being tested properly if at all, or that a manufacturer is trying to pull a fast one trying to sell hemp seed oil as “CBD”. Or even worse, trying to pass off a different oil with absolutely no therapeutic effects.
So how does Equilibria measure up? Equilibria products are free from GMOs, solvents, heavy metals, and they are pesticide and herbicide-free. Each plant is hand-harvested and the oil is carefully extracted from flowers only. Our body and cannabinoid receptors like when there are more cannabinoids in our system because this promotes the entourage effects. Equilibria ‘s products contain multiple cannabinoids, such as CBD, CBDa, CBDv, CBN, CBG, CBC, THC (0.3% or less), THCa, and THCv. In my practice I currently only recommend a handful of hemp-based CBD products and Equilibria is one of them. Their products are extremely high quality and my clients have had success in achieving symptom relief and reaching wellness goals by using them. Equilibria products may not be the cheapest out there, but as I said in the beginning, you get what you pay for and with Equilibria you can be sure you are getting effective products of the highest quality.