Since the Food and Drug Administration can’t figure out whether supplements that contain cannabidiol, the marijuana-adjacent oil known as CBD, are legal, can a customer who thought they were buying a legal product demand their money back?
A group of remorseful CBD users is suing to test that theory, and it’s going after the companies that put CBD on the map — and according to Vice Magazine, “CBD Marketing Went Too Far, and New Lawsuits Might Take It Down.”
“Unlike previous suits—most of which targeted things like false claims about the amount of CBD in a product, or what CBD products claim to do—these new lawsuits are focused on the simple fact that products contain CBD in the first place.”
In two major lawsuits recently filed against Charlotte’s Web and CV Sciences, two of the largest CBD manufacturers in the country, consumers allege that the companies engaged in “false, fraudulent, unfair, deceptive, and misleading” marketing of their CBD products by claiming they were run-of-the-mill dietary supplements, like vitamin D or iron. Similar lawsuits have also been filed against at least two other smaller CBD makers, Infinite CBD and Green Roads. In all of the cases, they are asking a judge to force the companies to return all of the profits they’ve made from those sales, which could decimate the nascent industry.
This potentially disastrous spate of lawsuits is the latest frustrating development for the CBD industry. Despite raking in millions, as interest in CBD skyrockets, CBD manufacturers have been waiting for more than a year for clear rules from the FDA on how they can legally sell these wildly popular products. Manufacturers say this spate of lawsuits is the latest in a series of negative repercussions caused by the FDA’s struggle to set clear rules of the road, and that these lawsuits are likely to continue until the FDA acts.
“We’re just going to see a lot of this sort of mischief go on until the FDA does what it needs to be doing, which is establishing a formal regulatory framework for CBD,” said Jonathan Miller, general counsel of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the trade association for hemp and CBD companies, which counts both Charlotte’s Web and CV Sciences as members.
