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CBD Oracle’s lab study found that most of the “hemp” sold on Amazon contains no cannabinoids, and almost half had no detectable trace of hemp whatsoever.
Sellers on Amazon are calling ordinary gummy bears “hemp gummies” and charging CBD-like prices for them, according to a new lab study commissioned by CBD Oracle. The investigation found that 43% of Amazon hemp products don’t contain hemp at all, while others contain huge hidden doses of delta-8 THC. The situation for hemp customers on Amazon is dire, with unreliable products being the norm, no way to get in contact with sellers and no substantial action from Amazon even in the face of credible reports.
Investigating Amazon’s Hemp Market
If you’re familiar with the hemp market in California or elsewhere under the 2018 Farm Bill, you’ll immediately notice some red flags when browsing Amazon’s hemp selection. Products make big promises and appear to be in some unspoken competition for who can offer the highest dose of hemp, with 12-ounce packages claiming that they somehow crammed over 100 ounces of hemp inside.
The problem is compounded by Amazon policy. The retailer doesn’t allow CBD in consumable products, so sellers are purposefully vague about what their products contain. Writing “contains CBD” would get the product pulled, but saying “hemp extract” and then listing CBD-associated benefits like “relieves stress” and “provides restful sleep” doesn’t provoke any response from the retailer.
CBD Oracle, a California-based cannabis consumer research company, purchased 56 of the most popular hemp products on Amazon to see what they actually contained. They were tested by InfiniteCAL’s San Diego lab, including ordinary cannabinoid potency testing and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) testing to identify hemp seed oil and other potential ingredients.
What’s Really in Amazon’s “Hemp” Gummies?
The study found that most of the promises made on product pages are outright false. 62.5% of products didn’t contain any cannabinoids at all, and 43% didn’t contain any hemp – not even hemp seed oil. CBD Oracle estimated that the Amazon hemp market generates $64 million in revenue per year, but almost half of this comes from what is ultimately overpriced, hemp-free candy.
Things weren’t much better when the CBD Oracle team did find cannabinoids. 30% of products violated Amazon’s policy by containing CBD, and another 11% contained undeclared THC. Trace amounts of THC wouldn’t be a huge deal, but three products contained doses of delta-8 THC that put them well beyond the potency of legal edibles in California. Delta-8 THC is not even legal in California, but you can get it shipped nationwide from Amazon if you know what to look for.
These results paint a clear picture: despite Amazon’s overly-cautious approach, the lack of enforcement action creates much bigger problems than legal CBD products ever would.
Lies, Damned Lies and Gummy Bears: How Amazon Sellers Market Their Hemp
The lab results show that Amazon hemp sellers often stick a “hemp” label on a jar of ordinary gummy bears and jack up the price accordingly, but CBD Oracle’s analysis of the marketing of hemp on Amazon reveals a multitude of additional issues.
It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that 96% of products did not advertise an accurate dosage to consumers. This would be obvious if companies provided a certificate of lab analysis (COA) with their products, which is expected of any reputable hemp company. None of the products included in the analysis provided a COA on Amazon itself, and 95% did not have one available anywhere online. This means there is no way for customers to check what the products contain, short of personally paying to get them lab tested.
You might assume that customer reviews could fill this gap, but these have issues too. Mozilla’s FakeSpot AI, designed to spot deceptive reviews, anomalous review histories and other issues, determined that 48% of products were graded D or lower for overall review reliability. This means that reading the reviews to work out if you should buy is about as useful as flipping a coin and buying if it turns up heads.
The problems get bigger from there, with two major legal violations being commonplace in the market. Firstly, 52% of product pages made an unapproved medical claim, based on FDA criteria, usually claiming the gummies can help with pain, stress or insomnia. Secondly, 27 still-listed products don’t give customers enough information about their sellers to comply with the INFORM Consumers Act. This second point is pretty serious: each violation carries a $50,120 fine, so this alone could cost Amazon $1.3 million.
How Can Amazon Fix the Problems?
The elephant in the room is the lack of enforcement. Amazon sellers CBD Oracle interviewed complained about inconsistency, noting that their compliant products were pulled from the storefront while obviously-deceptive gummies were left in place despite well-founded complaints. Amazon carries an incredible number of products and it seems that the manpower to manage the hemp market is simply not there.
There are two potential solutions. One is ostensibly the current policy on Amazon: removing products which contain CBD or are deceptively marketed. However, this is clearly not working very well and they would need to invest substantially more in enforcement to actually wrestle control of the market.
The second is much easier: open up the market to genuine CBD companies. If they removed the prohibition on CBD – provided that each product is backed by a publicly-accessible COA from an accredited third-party lab – it would shift the advantage back towards reputable companies. 95% of the products included in the lab study would have failed to clear this hurdle, and they would quickly be replaced by brands that do give customers what they pay for and who actually care about their reputation.
Until Amazon steps up to address this problem, customers will be the ones who pay the price and companies selling overpriced candy based on false promises will continue to reap the rewards.
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