What can’t you buy on Amazon these days?
The online retail giant sells everything from foodstuffs to computer parts. Nearly any product you can think of, Amazon can deliver to your doorstep—sometimes within a few hours. While brick-and-mortar stores and mom-and-pop shops have been feeling the pressures of the pandemic, many forced to shutter for good, Amazon saw over 500 billion dollars in growth last year. With Covid-19 still keeping people sequestered in their homes, e-commerce sales have gone through the roof, and nobody does e-commerce better than Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
So wouldn’t it make sense for a burgeoning manufacturer to get their CBD onto an online marketplace that gets millions of unique visitors every single day? Shouldn’t selling CBD on Amazon be an obvious choice? You may be surprised to hear the answer.
Are You Allowed To Sell CBD On Amazon?
The 2018 farm bill may have legalized hemp and hemp-derived CBD on a federal level, but state laws and regulations regarding the sale of the cannabinoid are complicated, to say the least—especially when interstate shipping is involved. Rather than get into the weeds of cannabis law, Amazon elects to simply flat-out ban CBD from being sold on their platform. That’s certainly one way to ensure that everything is above board.
The official policy outlined on Amazon’s seller’s guide page explicitly states:
Listings for products containing cannabidiol (CBD) are prohibited, including but not limited to:
Full spectrum hemp oil
Rich hemp oil
Products that have been identified as containing CBD by LegitScript
Does Amazon Sell CBD Oil?
But wait, when I search for CBD Oil on amazon, literally hundreds of results show up? What’s going on?
While Amazon’s policy banning the sale of CBD is pretty clear-cut, the tech company doesn’t necessarily forbid the sale of any cannabis-derived product on their seller’s marketplace. Searching terms like, “CBD cartridge” or “CBD seltzer water” will still result in a wide range of vaguely marketed hemp products. For example, hemp-seed oil doesn’t contain CBD but is often sold as a dietary supplement.
Unscrupulous sellers try to take advantage of the general lack of knowledge around hemp vs. CBD products by marketing hemp-seed oil under the moniker hemp oil by implying it contains CBD. They will even use search tags that include CBD to trick uninformed customers into buying products they don’t actually want. While you may still see some hemp oil benefits from these products we can’t say the same for the benefits of CBD. Even though the product looks as if it’s legit CBD oil, it doesn’t contain any of the banned cannabinoid, which makes it a-ok to sell on Amazon. The lack of regulation makes this a huge problem in the industry right now, and it’s one of the many reasons we suggest CBD flower over CBD oil.
To make matters even more confusing, some marketplace sellers will do the reverse and market genuine CBD products without explicitly calling attention to the fact that they contain CBD in an attempt to stay under Amazon’s radar. In a recent expose done by the Washington Post, a team of journalists purchased thirteen hemp products from Amazon and tested them for CBD content. Of the thirteen, a whopping eleven tested positive for CBD. So it would seem that even though Amazon is clear in its policy, many manufacturers simply choose to flout it and sell CBD anyway. We, of course, do not recommend doing this.
Where To Sell CBD
In the past few years, CBD has made incredible headway into becoming a mainstream product. More people than ever before are familiar with CBD and know about the unregulated industry’s pitfalls. Consumers want to buy their CBD from reputable manufacturers and are rightly skeptical of third-party vendors.
That’s why the best place to sell CBD is directly from your company’s website. Here consumers can get to know your business’ ethos, and you can highlight the all-important certificate of analysis showing that your CBD has been properly lab-tested not only for potency but for mycotoxins, heavy metals, and residual pesticides as well.
The best way to sell CBD is by giving potential customers all the tools they need to make an informed decision.
