CBD oil, from hemp plant, crops up in Asheville businesses

ASHEVILLE — The CBD latte at Dobra Tea tastes better than it smells: of dried leaves and hay and something on the bitter end of herbaceous. But, blended with honey and milk, it has a pleasant taste, at once earthy and sweet.

Though the taste is a bonus, the real draw in this caffeine-free latte is the CBD, or cannabidiol, oil. The CBD served in the lattes is derived from Kentucky-grown hemp, decocted from the flowers and leaves with hot dairy or coconut milk.

"CBD is a miracle," said Andrew Snavely, the owner of Dobra Tea. Snavely's downtown tearoom is an oasis of calm on Lexington Avenue, where new age music lilts from the speakers and some guests remove their shoes and sit on cushions to sip tea. "I consider it the fountain of youth."

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While proponents sing the praises of CBD, which they say has the power to temper anxiety, treat chronic pain, and snuff out seizures, others highlight the fact that CBD products are unregulated, which they say leaves the door open to adulterations and fluctuations in THC content, which at greater levels gives cannabis users a high.

The World Health Organization's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence last year released a much-cited report declaring CBD safe.

"To date, there is no evidence of recreational use of CBD or any public health-related problems associated with the use of pure CBD," it concluded.

There's a national buzz surrounding CBD's use in food and even beauty products, even though it doesn't cause a "high."

Cannabidiol from industrial hemp, which by definition contains no more than .3 percent of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive chemical THC, is useless as a recreational drug.

Hemp is a nonpsychoactive variety of Cannabis sativa L and, though it comes from the same cannabis species as marijuana, it's genetically and chemically distinct.

Still the tea, which has about 40 milligrams of CBD oil, causes a relaxed state, Snavely said. "I like to say CBD makes you feel like you're lying in a Lazy Boy: totally comfortable, but totally focused and completely mentally available."

He credits CBD with decreasing his anxiety and improving his dream state. "I have sensory dreams where I can smell and taste — it's amazing."

Snavely, long a proponent of the healing powers of the tea ceremonies so revered in the East, thinks CBD is the right medicine for modern Western culture. "As anxious as a lot of Americans are right now, this is the medicine to help them."

Still, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency considers CBD a federally controlled substance, a ruling hotly debated by proponents, hemp growers and farm groups.

The Rutherford County Sheriff's Office in central Tennessee earlier this month padlocked 23 local businesses accused of selling products containing cannabidiol, the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal reported.

Meanwhile, farmers like Democratic N.C. House Rep. John Ager, say CBD has the most money-making potential of any hemp byproduct.

Ager, of the Hickory Nut Gap Farm family in Fairview, represents farm interests in his legislative role. He promoted the passage of Senate Bill 313, which opened the door for a North Carolina hemp pilot program to operate under guidelines established in the 2014 Federal Farm Bill.

"Hemp is talked about in so many ways because it is so versatile," he said. "And from what I'm hearing, CBD oil is the most profitable business that can come out of it."

CBD's mellowing effects and lack of incapacitating high have drawn fans not usually associated with hemp- or cannabis-based products: women.

A Forbes study of users of CBD, which can now be found in lattes in Brooklyn coffee shops and in beauty products along with other buzzy ingredients like manuka honey, found the majority are female.

Will Oseroff, CEO & founder of Blue Ridge Hemp, sells CBD-infused topical products like salt scrubs and essential oil roll-ons to treat everything from headaches to chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia. Will Oseroff

His branding is modern and clean, devoid of the imagery he found on some of the earlier products to the market. "In 2014, when I first started seeing CBD companies pop up, I was seeing a lot of pot leaves."

But now that society is opening up to CBD's viability for pain management and holistic health, he said, much of the marketing has shifted toward a different demographic.

Oseroff's biggest market? "Predominantly women aged 18-35, health-conscious women, millennials and the health-conscious yoga community and the fitness community. That's where we put our efforts in marketing."

Applying CBD to the skin rather than ingesting it, he said, is one of the most effective ways to get it into the system, without interference from the digestive system or liver.

It also allows him to re-create the entourage effect, or the notion that chemicals within the cannabis plant work together synergistically — particularly THC and CBD — with other, legal botanicals.

The resulting salves, lotions, massage oils, muscle gels and other products are created with the help of a network of local holistic health businesses and are distributed to 10,000 or so retail customers and 100 wholesale accounts worldwide.

As such, Blue Ridge Hemp is one of the bigger suppliers of CBD products in the region, one of the things that makes its turn later this year to North Carolina-grown hemp notable.

That means not only more money going into the regional farm economy, but greater accountability in the supply chain, Oseroff said.

"We'll not only be able to look at plants and follow the process into CBD isolate, but we can also go look into the farmers' eyes and say, 'How do you feel about this round of crops?'"

Ager wants that, too. "I am a farmer, and I want farmers to succeed and to have a crop that could well be a new cash crop in North Carolina."

North Carolina law allows farmers to grow hemp as part of the state’s hemp research pilot program.

But Ager sees little resistance to opening that up to more farmers in the state. He thinks the eastern part of the state is likely to corner the market, but hemp also has potential as a niche crop in the mountains. "I believe there is money to be made."

The CBD consumer market is projected to grow to $2.1 billion by 2020, according to the Hemp Business Journal. That's a 700 percent increase over 2016, Forbes reports.

Robert Eidus, who has for 25 years been a medicinal herb farmer in North Carolina, developed a new strain of low-THC, high-CBD medical cannabis that's being produced into medicine in places where it's legal.

Is CBD the miracle drug it's purported to be? It is, he said — but with caveats. "It has, for thousands of years, been a miracle drug for the human body."

But, he cautioned, only if it's administered in the right proportions, if it's grown organically and harvested correctly.

"It also has to be lab tested to know what you have in that batch, and once you have that information, it needs to be tailored to people, as far as their condition, what strains they need, and in what proportions they need to take."

The vast majority of what's legally on the market is not miraculous, and if it is, it's not legal, he said. CBD needs to be balanced with THC to be effective, he explained.

"And it's not legal if it has one-thousandth of a molecule of THC, according to the feds. And medical marijuana is not yet legal in the state."

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Eidus thinks that day is coming, citing the CARERS Act, a bipartisan medical marijuana reform bill filed with the U.S. Senate last year.

Ager is more reticent. "It would take a political change," he said. "But there are representatives out there out there who support it."

Ager is one. He had a close friend who died of colon cancer, and marijuana helped ease her suffering. "That made me a believer."

FIND CBD OIL

Dobra Tea: 78 N Lexington Ave., 707 Haywood Road, 120 Broadway St. (Black Mountain).

Blue Ridge Hemp Co.: 61 1/2 N. Lexington Ave., www.blueridgehempco.com.

Goddess Ghee: www.goddessghee.com.

Carolina Hemp Company: www.carolinahempcompany.com.