CBD’s takeover and introduction into the mainstream has been unprecedented, making many well-known business eager to get involved.

CBD has been called the “next gold rush” so many times, it’s starting to lose it’s impact. Still, the numbers don’t lie, and everything suggests that CBD wellness products are here to stay.

Although reading about CBD’s success is awesome, all of this progress won’t truly hit you until you stumble upon a cannabis-laced product while conducting your regular shopping. And the more cannabis is embraced across America, the more likely this is to happen to people with all sorts of backgrounds. To prove how our times are changing, here are 8 commercial and well respected businesses that are making their moves on the CBD industry (you know CBD is mainstream when Walmart is considering investing in it):

Sephora

CBD and hemp oil are huge within the beauty industry, with dozens of small companies gaining traction and popularity thanks to the growing cannabis industry in America. Sephora, one of the largest distributors of beauty products in the world, has added curated cannabis sections to their stores. These feature notable hemp and CBD products like Lord Jones and Herbivore Botanicals.

Ulta Beauty

Ulta Beauty, known for its wide range of beauty products, announced that in March 2020, they’d carry their first batch of CBD skin-care products. The lotions and creams available will be five different ones from Cannuka, a company known for blending CBD and manuka oil. These products will be available for purchase in Ulta Beauty stores and online.

Neiman Marcus

On January 14, 2019, Neiman Marcus announced that they would offer CBD beauty products in their stores, including brands like Sagely Naturals, Cannuka, Cannabliss Organic, Code of Harmony, and more. “Cannabis beauty brands are becoming increasingly popular and CBD products are the next big thing in beauty. Neiman Marcus plans to continue to expand our CBD assortment while offering customers the latest and greatest in Trending Beauty,” said Kim D’Angelo, beauty buyer for Neiman Marcus. The products offered include face balms, lotions, soaps, serums and masks.

DSW

DSW is also taking the leap into CBD beauty products, which is weird because they sell shoes. DSW is partnering up with Seventh Sense products, selling their body lotions, foot creams and muscle balms. You’ll find these products in 94 out of DSW’s 500 stores all across the US.

Urban Outfitters

Urban Outfitters, known for its clothing and accessories that target men and women between the ages of 18 to 30, recently announced a partnership with CBD for Life. This company has been around since 2015 and specializes in beauty products containing CBD. Urban Outfitters will carry their products in six initial locations, two stores in California and four in New York.

Simon Malls

Simon Malls, the biggest mall owners in America, are opening over 100 CBD stores across their locations in the US. They recently announced their partnership with Green Growth Brands, an Ohio-based cannabis company.

“We are committed to adding new and dynamic retailers and uses to our shopping destinations, and the GGB shopping experience is exactly the type of innovation our customers want and expect from us,” said John Rulli, president of Simon Malls, via press release. The first store is planned to open in March in Castleton Square Mall, Indianapolis. Rulli continued to express his support for CBD, explaining that the stores weren’t pop ups or temporary. “It’s a category that we are embracing and getting behind.”

Whole Foods

Whole Foods founder Steve Mackey recently said that once cannabis is legalized in Texas, grocery stores would probably get involved within the business. “You just never know what happens over time with markets. They change and evolve,” he said. Although selling marijuana in the aisles of Whole Foods sounds like a distant truth, the licensing of CBD and hemp products could occur much sooner, especially considering how other companies and competitors are approaching the matter.

Walmart

Walmart, or the store where you can buy anything and everything, showed some interest last year in CBD. In October 2018, Walmart’s Canada division was conducting research in order to add CBD products to their stores, causing a brief but considerable 2.5 bump on their share price. Currently, you can purchase some of their products online, but we’re still waiting on news that confirm their full investment on the cannabinoid.

A group of hundreds of professors, health experts, doctors, and politicians across UK political parties have signed on to letters calling for medical marijuana to be available for free in the United Kingdom. To make medical cannabis available at no cost to patients, prescriptions have to come from the National Health Service (NHS), the UK’s comprehensive, universal, and free-at-the-point-of-service medical system.

Prescribing medical cannabis on the NHS is currently legal in the UK under certain circumstances. But a number of restrictions and bureaucratic obstacles have so far deterred any NHS specialists from prescribing medical cannabis treatments. In their letter, drug and health experts, along with members of Parliament, urge UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock to ease those restrictions. And in another letter, another group of MPs representing Liberal Democrats and Labour have asked Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene on behalf of patients unable to obtain medical cannabis prescriptions.

Doctors and MPs Urge UK Prime Minister to Back Free Medical Cannabis Prescriptions

After nearly a year under the UK’s highly restrictive rules for accessing legal medical cannabis, doctors and politicians say its time for a change. They say the current system of controls isn’t working to put medical cannabis in the hands of patients who need it most. And as a result, patients are dying unnecessarily, experts say, from addictions to dangerous painkillers and from symptoms that could be treated effectively and more safely with cannabis.

“The failure of the medical and pharmacy professions to embrace [medical cannabis] being made ‘legal’ is a great worry to patients and carers, and will already have led to more preventable deaths from conditions such as epilepsy,” argue senior doctors and MPs in their letter to Health Secretary Hancock.

According to a recent study from Public Health England, a quarter of all adults in the UK use strong painkillers, sleeping aids, and anti-depressants. Many doctors and researchers, along with patients themselves, have said that cannabis can treat underlying conditions better than those medicines.

Experts in the UK want Hancock to remove restrictions and make it easier for NHS doctors to prescribe medical cannabis. Specifically, they want to do away with rules requiring senior medical doctors to sign off on specialists’ prescriptions. They also want the regulations for importing medical cannabis products simplified. And in perhaps the most important ask, they want general practitioners, not just specialists, to be able to write cannabis prescriptions.

Medical Cannabis is Legal in the UK, But Almost Impossible to Get

The proposed changes to the rules governing medical cannabis could make an immediate change in the lives of many patients. With a prescription from a medical provider on the NHS, patients would be able to obtain cannabis at no charge. Without one, patients who can afford to are turning to private caregivers, where medical cannabis prescriptions can run upwards of $1,250 each month. The high cost ends up driving many patients to unregulated cannabis products for relief.

But health experts, professors and MPs also want to see a longer-term effort to support medical cannabis access. They say educating doctors about medical cannabis and training them how to prescribe it is necessary to overcome physicians’ fears they’ll make a mistake. Health experts wants to see medical cannabis treatments available for patients suffering from a range of conditions, including epilepsy, chronic pain, anxiety, multiple sclerosis, insomnia, depression and others.

But the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), a corporate think tank that advises on national health and social policy, responded to the letters by citing a “lack of clinical evidence to support the use of cannabis products.” NICE does support ongoing efforts to study medical cannabis. In November, Imperial College London Professor David Nutt, a leading drug expert, will launch an independent clinical trial involving 20,000 patients.

More than 500 people have been diagnosed with vaping-related breathing illnesses, but the cause remains unknown, U.S. health officials said Thursday. An eighth death was also reported.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration revealed that its criminal investigations unit started tracking leads early on, as cases pointed to black market vaping products. The agency’s tobacco director, Mitch Zeller, stressed that it is not interested in prosecuting individuals who use illegal products but is lending a hand because of the unit’s “special skills.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 530 confirmed and probable cases have been reported in 38 states and one U.S. territory, up from 380 a week ago.

Missouri joined the list later Thursday, announcing the death this week of a man in his mid-40s at a St. Louis hospital.

Canada reported its first case Wednesday, a high school student who was on life support and has since recovered.

All patients had used an electronic cigarette or other vaping device.

Doctors have said the illnesses resemble an inhalation injury, with the lungs apparently reacting to a caustic substance. So far, no single vaping product or ingredient has been linked to the illnesses, though most patients reported vaping THC, the high-producing ingredient in marijuana.

The man who died in Missouri told his family he started vaping in May for chronic pain, but investigators have not yet determined if he was vaping THC, according to a spokeswoman at Mercy Hospital St. Louis.

Two-thirds of the cases involved 18- to 34-year-olds. Three-quarters are men.

Some of the first cases appeared in April. CDC hasn’t said when most people got sick.

A congressional subcommittee will hold a hearing on the outbreaks on Tuesday.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic neurological disorder that gets worse with time. There is no known cure for this disease, which causes a lack of control over bodily movements, depression, cognitive decline, and more. 

This condition can be a very debilitating disorder, because it can affect eating, sleeping, and many other vital bodily functions and activities. Decades of research have been dedicated to understanding the role of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the disease, but the genetic and environmental factors that cause people to develop PD are unknown. 

Research Overview 

Substantial research has demonstrated the neuroprotective, antidepressant, analgesic, and antioxidative properties of cannabis. Because all of these factors are linked to Parkinson's disease, cannabis may help manage the multifaceted symptoms of this neurological condition.

Medical cannabis use could help manage the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. (Photo: Gina Coleman/Weedmaps)

The Studies

Animal studies have shown that cannabinoids may play an important role in protecting against the neurodegeneration that is seen in PD. A 2011 study in the British Journal of Pharmacology demonstrates that THCV may be particularly important for this neuroprotective effect. Preventing the loss of dopamine-producing neurons is at least partially thanks to activity at the CB2 receptor, according to a 2009 study in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

A large 2004 survey of 339 PD patients revealed that cannabis relieved symptoms in 46% of the patients, who reported improvements in muscle rigidity and various aspects of motor control, including tremors. Similar motor symptom relief was found in an observational study of 22 PD patients, as reported in 2014 in the journal Clinical Neuropharmacology. This study also found that cannabis significantly improved both sleep and pain for these patients.  

There have been relatively few clinical trials examining the benefit of cannabis for Parkinson's. A 2004 randomized controlled trial of 17 PD patients, published in Neurology, failed to reveal any benefit of oral cannabis extract. However, additional clinical trials are forthcoming in Canada, where researchers from the University Health Network, Toronto will be examining the effects of cannabis oil with various amounts of THC on pain, sleep, and motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease. 

Patient Perspectives

Actor Michael J. Fox is perhaps the most prominent Parkinson's disease patient and spokesperson. Diagnosed at 29 while he was filming “Doc Hollywood” in 1991, Fox didn't reveal his health condition to the public until 1998, seven years after the fact. Today, the acclaimed actor is not only a survivor of Parkinson's disease but also a vocal advocate for cannabis treatment.

In a 2016 interview with the luxury lifestyle magazine Haute Living, Fox explained, “I was diagnosed 25 years ago, and I was only supposed to work for another 10 years. I was supposed to be pretty much disabled by now. I'm far from it.”

A two-pronged survey focusing on Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS) was hosted online by the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in 2016. Participants who used cannabis reported high levels of effectiveness and lower levels of disability on the survey, especially with regard to mood, memory, and fatigue. The survey results were subsequently published in the journal Complementary Therapeutic Medicine in 2017. 

What the Experts Say 

Despite the encouraging results of early studies, not every medical expert is rushing to prescribe medical marijuana to Parkinson's patients. This resistance may be in part due to issues with federal illegality as well as the lukewarm stance of the Parkinson's Foundation, which maintains that “research is still needed to determine how medical marijuana should be administered and how its long-term use can affect symptoms of PD.”

However, a Parkinson's disease-focused media source, called Parkinson's News Today, has been more open in acknowledging the potential benefits of cannabis treatment, notably for older patients. The news source cited a 2018 study published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine that focused on 2,736 patients ages 65 and older who used cannabis for a variety of health reasons. Researchers found that nearly one-fifth of these patients discontinued or reduced their opioid usage after six months of using cannabis. 

One study shows the one-fifth of patients have discontinued or reduced their opioid usage by using cannabis. (Photo: Gina Coleman/Weedmaps)

As a result of this study, Parkinson's News Today asserted that, “medical cannabis is a safe and effective way for older people to alleviate symptoms of Parkinson's, cancer, and other diseases …The use of medical cannabis has grown significantly in recent years. Because of an aging population, the use has increased in older people in particular.”

The Bottom Line

Despite some conflicting reports about the effectiveness of cannabis for Parkinson's symptoms, there is enough promising evidence to justify additional placebo-controlled clinical trials. Because most people who have Parkinson's are older than 60, its particularly important for these patients to discuss cannabis use with their doctors, to prevent potentially dangerous drug interactions with other medications.