What Separates Woodland Herbal’s CBD Medicines? How It May End Soon

With legalization of CBD has come an influx of companies selling all sorts of differing CBD products, but how do you know what’s good, safe, and trustworthy? First, you need to find a company who you feel you can trust, then you need to look into their process, ingredients source, and then decide if you think they know what they’re doing.

Many of these companies burst onto the scene within the first week of legalization in Ohio to make a quick buck. Even the original companies in Colorado and California charge a hefty price for CBD, and sure while it’s true that growing, harvesting, testing and processing anything Cannabis is very expensive, it’s also true that $150-300 for 1500mg of CBD extract is ridiculous.

We do not grow our own CBD, yet, because Ohio has yet to release the details regarding their upcoming licensure process. We import pre-tested high CBD flowers from a family farm in Oregon who specializes in organic growing, which is a rarity right now. Very few CBD plants grown in the U.S. are Certified Organic, but we import the best to make the very best CBD medicines.

A particular strain of hemp is grown specifically for our products. We chose Special Sauce for its high potency (always 20%+ CBD and below 0.3% THC), quality of grow (always organic and tested free of pesticides, microbials, mycotoxins, heavy metals and foreign matter) and for its dynamic medicinal properties. So that’s how we know we're making the best quality medicine available, each and every time.

When you purchase CBD from a random brand in a gas station, head shop or natural foods store, you don’t know anything beyond what they printed on the package. CBD is a medicine and it is indeed natural, but that doesn’t mean you can trust everything you read. Sadly, one fellow from another state was caught peddling insanely overpriced olive oil in cute tiny bottles.

The other unfortunate part is not all CBD is equal. There are isolates, where a lab stripped all the other goodness from the plant and isolated the CBD molecule, which lessens the impact of the medicinal part of the plant tremendously. These isolates come out as a white powder and are often melted into carrier oils and sold as a clear final product. We always suggest looking for a brown to gold color.

This is how some brands can skirt around the worry of the consumer of failing drug tests. Understandable, but simply not the same quality of product. Scientists have studied these effects and reported that full spectrum is necessary for achieving the total effectiveness of the plant medicine, labeling this as the ‘entourage effect.’ When you have an unrefined CBD product, it will be labeled as full spectrum, because it has hundreds of other medicinal compounds in it, like CBN, CBG, THC, and other plant terpenes.

The biggest concern as far as quality goes starts with where exactly the hemp came from and how it was grown. Majority CBD brands source the cheapest material they can, which means they process industrial grown hemp, which is lower in overall CBD and grown with any sort of legal pesticides, fertilizers and GMO-alterations. These things severely impact the medicinal value and safety of the plant extract. We steer clear of these things for many reasons, but the main reason is because we are Herbalists and we aim to create the best natural medicines possible.

The third reason to be picky about your CBD is how the company processes the plant material into the final product. We employ the cleanest method for extracting CBD oil from the flower and that is by way of an ethanol recovery system. We purge any remaining traces of the ethanol before activating the CBDA molecule, which transforms it to the highest potency of CBD or Cannabidol. Some brands use chemical solvents to extract the oil from the plant, including butane, propane, and isopropyl. These substances can be dangerous when they interact with the body, specifically when traces enter the bloodstream. These methods effectively take a powerful medicine and transform it negatively into an utterly unknown entity which may do more harm than good in the long run.

Finally, what sets the Woodland Herbal Apothecary apart from other CBD brands is we are Herbalists first. Before going public, we made medicines for our community and our families for hundreds of years. In fact, we are made up of family members who go back four generations, with additional family members who we traced back to ten generations ago. We are always focused first on creating the best that can be made to help and heal.

When you buy a plant medicine from an Herbalist, you’re buying generational knowledge from someone who cares. Buying from an Herbalist means you’re getting the best from an entire world of plant medicine rather than a singular supplement of unknown origin. With Woodland Herbal, you know you’re getting an organic-based natural blend of plants that are known to interact favorably with the body, made with positive and healing intentions. Instead of a single set of traits from a single plant that was processed from industrial grown plants and processed in a factory with the intention of making money, you’re receiving a well-rounded medicine rather than a basic product of subpar quality.

The difference is we care.

Now, with that said, there is a new proposed rules change within the Ohio CBD laws that might limit our ability to serve you. The new proposed laws via Ohio Department of Agriculture state that processors of CBD hemp can only legally do so in a standardized lab facility, not in a residentially zoned area, and all CBD must be tested prior to sales. Other changes include a brutal $3000 yearly fee to be a CBD hemp processor and that all products must carry certain warnings like a pack of cigarettes or alcohol.

While many of the changes are needed like required testing, many of the rules literally hand all CBD sales over to big businesses who can afford these stringent requirements. As many of you know, we are a family of Herbalists who work from our home offices, so the fee, residential zoning and lab facility requirements would end our ability to serve you the best natural medicines we can. We need your help to fight these money grabs by big business and big government. You can read more at https://agri.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/oda/divisions/legal-office/admin-rules/proposed-rules (click JCARR tab then read at bottom of page where it states: “Hemp - Cultivation and Processing Rules - OAC 901:14-1 and 901:14-2”) You can send comments directly to the lawmakers who are creating these new rules at: AGReComments@agri.ohio.gov