CBD May Be Legal, But Is It Safe?

As states have legalized the medical and recreational use of marijuana, they have also established guidelines for the testing and sale of those products, Nassif says. That can include checking THC, CBD, and contaminant levels, requiring standardized labels, and restricting sales to state-licensed stores, called dispensaries. But the CBD marketplace, which mainly uses CBD extracted from hemp, is not as well-developed or regulated, says Jonathan Miller, legal counsel of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a group of more than 60 CBD companies in the U.S. The state-required testing for CBD often focuses simply on hemp while it’s still growing in the field or just after it’s harvested, says Miller, and is meant to simply make sure that the plants have low levels of THC—which means 0.3 percent or less. A few states require some additional testing. Colorado, for example, requires manufacturers that add CBD to food to check the THC in those products and to keep levels below the 0.3 percent cutoff.