Holland & Barrett: Is it a good idea to buy CBD products from high street stores?
The British CBD market is growing at a phenomenal rate and becoming a multi-billion-pound industry, thanks to the cannabidiol health boom. This chemical compound found in the hemp plants is considered as a magic remedy from almost all disorders and ailments. The study conducted by the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC) revealed that the CBD market was worth about £300 million in the United Kingdom. The researchers predict the cannabidiol industry to reach £1 billion in five years.
The study also demonstrates that people aged 55 years and older are the most frequent consumers, while the most popular CBD products include oil, tinctures, and capsules. Users take CBD-infused products to relieve a wide range of health conditions, such as anxiety, pain, or acne. Those who don’t want to be hooked on pain-reducing opioids and antidepressants believe that they’ve found an excellent substitution for addictive medicines. Is CBD indeed as safe and beneficial as it seems?
CBD saves the world
Cannabidiol (or CBD) is one of the numerous phytocannabinoids found in the hemp plants. Various scientists and doctors have already tested and confirmed the therapeutic properties of CBD. As far back as 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report stating that cannabidiol is well-tolerated in both humans and animals. In contrast to tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC), another chemical compound, CBD doesn’t make people intoxicated or addictive because it acts on brain and body receptors in another way.
Cannabidiol has a potential to treat a wide range of disorders, such as autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation), neurological conditions (Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, stroke), metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes), neuropsychiatric illness (autism, post-traumatic stress disorder), cardiovascular dysfunctions (arrhythmia, atherosclerosis), gut disorders (colitis, Crohn’s disease), skin problems (psoriasis, dermatitis). CBD-enriched products are used to reduce the after-effects of chemotherapy. More importantly, CBD has minor side effects, including dry mouth, decreased appetite, diarrhoea, or drowsiness.
Consumers can find a lot of forms of CBD products on the market. There are oils, capsules, tinctures, topicals, patches, creams, lotions, gummies, drinks and many others. People can add CBD oil or powder to their meals and drinks, or put some amount of CBD to their shampoos or creams. Easy consumption, numerous benefits, few side effects — it’s no wonder that cannabidiol has gained huge popularity over a short period of time.
To sell goods containing cannabidiol legally in Great Britain, vendors must ensure that the THC content in such products doesn’t exceed 0.2%. If the product contains more than 0.2% THC, it will be deemed illegal according to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The law also says that the legal CBD should be extracted from the industrial hemp approved by the European Union. UK law forbids selling and advertising CBD products as medicines. That’s why consumers can find cannabidiol-based edibles and topicals in the dietary supplement sections of online and offline stores.
Buying CBD products in Great Britain
Nowadays, users have no problems purchasing CBD products in the United Kingdom because they are fast appearing on the shelves of the best-known pharmacies, health stores, department stores, and popular supermarkets, such as Holland and Barrett. The main problem is that the CBD market is full of cheaply made products that can put your health at risk.
Consumers should be extra cautious when purchasing cannabidiol-based products. The studies demonstrate that CBD is not harmful, but you should know the content of the goods you are going to buy. Moreover, you should always carefully read the label and pay attention to THC content to avoid purchasing a product that contains too little CBD to be helpful and is high in THC. Dishonest manufacturers add too little CBD or too much THC to their goods or use hemp seed oil that doesn’t contain any cannabidiol.
Laura Fuentes, a co-founder of the CBD manufacturer Green Roads, thinks that there are tons of shady participants in the market. She said that some vendors had tried to sell them CBD extracts containing specified levels of cannabidiol or other compounds. The company provided her with the samples. She sent them to the independent lab for testing. The samples were in compliance with the specification. But when she ordered a kilogram and sent some amount to the lab, the result shocked her. It was not the same thing they provided as a sample. By the way, Green Roads spends $30 thousand to $40 thousand a month to test raw materials for metals, solvents, and pesticides. They also require certificates of origin from their suppliers. Not all market participants are ready to play fair and spend money to check the quality of the products.
Mislabelled products plague CBD industry
Very low potency of many CBD products on the market is another big problem. Thievish manufacturers do not hesitate to specify one amount of cannabidiol on the label, while the real CBD content is much lower. This means that a person has all chances to buy a bottle containing such little CBD that he/she won’t feel any effect and, correspondingly, any relief. People are being deceived at the expense of their well-being and health.
Italian specialists tested CBD-infused products sold across European countries and found that two-thirds had far less potent than their labels claimed. Other studies revealed that a lot of CBD goods contain distinctly different ingredients or include hardly any cannabidiol at all. Some products were intentionally filled with undeclared components to imitate the relaxing effects of CBD. They contained dextromethorphan (DXM), a potentially addictive cough syrup substance that has a mildly sedative impact because it is based on opioids.
But even low content of cannabidiol and ineffectiveness of the products seems a minor problem compared to “dirty” goods containing metals, piscicides, synthetic substances, and other harmful components. Unfortunately, the booming CBD industry has become a cash grab for unscrupulous businesses, especially importers of contaminated CBD oils. Contamined CBD oils can come from anywhere. For example, some disreputable CBD market participants bring heavily contaminated CBD distillate from China into Europe. Then they process this distillate into a legally marketable CBD oil.
They also refine this distillate into oils, the consistency and colour of which look like honey, and sell them as EU manufactured products labelled as “all-natural” and “pure” CBD. As a result, millions of British consumers are found to be cheated and put their health at risk. However, not all Chinese hemp plants are bad or polluted, but they are grown on large plots in northern Chinese regions where a significant number of coal and coke plants are located. Smog and black dust released by these plants adversely affect the hemp fields. Don’t you want to consume a poisoned CBD oil, do you? Instead of boosting your health, such oil will only harm your body.
How to find a reputable brand? Where to purchase a high-grade CBD oil? As a rule, people choose a well-known brand or a famous store that has extensive experience and an untarnished reputation. Nevertheless, even these criteria could not be enough to get an effective and pure product as the scandal involving one of the UK’s largest retailers Holland & Barrett and the Dutch brand Jacob Hooy.
Don’t trust the label
Holland & Barrett (H&B) is one of the British largest health and wellness retailers, offering customers a wide range of dietary supplements, vitamins and minerals, natural beauty products, and many other goods. The company runs more than 1,300 stores in 16 countries all over the world. Holland & Barrett operates in the following key areas: Ethical Beauty; Active Nutrition; VHMS (Vitamins, Herbals, Minerals, and Supplements); FNSS (Fruit, Nuts, Seeds, and Seasoning); and Specialist Food & Drink. The retailer sells branded and own-label products in its stores. Also, it owns several trademarks for specific product ranges.
Holland & Barrett was established as a grocery store in 1870 by Alfred Slapps Barrett and Major William Holland. Since then, the company changed owners several times. In 1970 the chain was bought by a UK wholesale provider Booker. In 1992 Holland & Barrett was purchased by Lloyds Pharmacy, a British community pharmacy chain, with more than 1,500 pharmacies. In 1997 the company was transferred to the hands of NBTY (known as Nature’s Bounty Co. now), an American manufacturer of vitamins and nutritional supplements. Three years later, the US private equity firm The Carlyle Group acquired NBTY. Finally, L1 Retail, a group belonging to Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, bought Holland & Barrett for £1.8 billion in 2017.
At present, customers can find more than 9K products on the shelves of the Holland & Barrett stores. The company was interested in adding the “hype dietary supplements” to its range of products. The retailer became the first high street shop to start selling CBD oil back in January 2018. In the span of one month, sales of Jacob Hooy CBD+ Oil grew by 37%. Produced in the Netherlands, Jacob Hooy oil is reportedly the best-selling CBD oil in Britain.
Jacob Hooy was established as a pharmacy in 1743. The company sells vitamins, minerals supplements, health food, and CBD oils and capsules. The manufacturer produces its oils from the seeds of the hemp plant. It is an old well-known brand whose name alone has credibility. That’s why the news that a pharmacy giant Holland & Barrett sells CBD oil with illegal amounts of THC was like a bolt out of the blue.
If you go to the Holland & Barrett website and open the tab with Jacob Hooy CBD products, you’ll see that they are “non-psychoactive and the THC content is tested on every batch to meet specification requirements of less than 0.05%.” At the same time, the Jacob Hooy website says that a 10ml bottle of its CBD oil contains 4.4 mg of THC. According to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, the legal limit of THC in any one product is 1 mg.
Fera Science, a laboratory part-owned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, tested a bottle of Jacob Hooy CBD oil purchased from one of the stores belonging to Holland & Barrett. The lab specialists found 12.4 mg of THC in this oil, which exceeds the legal limit by 12 times. Furthermore, the laboratory tested 31 brands of CBD oil bought in stores and online and found that ten of them had THC levels above the legal limit. One of them contained almost 24 mg of THC. If an individual takes more than 10 mg of THC, his/her cognitive functions will be adversely affected.
We have studied the Jacob Hooy website and don’t find detailed product information. We expected a well-known brand like Jacob Hooy to have a more transparent and educational website. Neither Holland & Barrett website nor Jacob Hooy website provides any Certificates of Analysis conducted by the third-party labs to prove that the products are safe and contain no harmful substances.
As we see, even reliable players like Holland & Barrett and Jacob Hooy don’t hasten to spend their money to test the products they offer to the public. People intuitively trust big brands because of name recognition. The sad truth is their CBD products are not the safest on the market. Even with many alternative CBD distributors, consumers still choose Holland & Barrett. They’re left to trust the brands on their word, which, given their reputation and history, is probably right. Nevertheless, users should keep both eyes open and carefully read the label and look for additional evidence that the product they’re going to buy is safe.
Final thoughts
Six million British people had ever used CBD products in 2019, according to the CMC survey. They consume cannabidiol containing goods to maintain their well-being and relieve some medical conditions. Of course, everyone wonders where he/she can purchase a safe, potent CBD product of high quality. Since there are a lot of scams and false advertising on the market, it’s challenging to find a reliable and unpolluted CBD oil. Don’t trust big names; don’t be afraid to pay your attention to small market players. Being forced to compete with the giants and rise to the top, they don’t grudge money on third-party testing to provide you with transparent, honest information about their CBD products.
Verified by a Healthcare Professional
Anastasiia Myronenko
Anastasiia Myronenko is a Medical Physicist actively practicing in one of the leading cancer centers in Kyiv, Ukraine. She received her master’s degree in Medical Physics at Karazin Kharkiv National University and completed Biological Physics internship at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, Germany. Anastasiia Myronenko specializes in radiation therapy and is a fellow of Ukrainian Association of Medical Physicists.
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