For the first time, the state of Florida is regulating hemp-derived CBD products. On January 2 2020, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) passed a new bill initiating mandatory inspections for all CBD retailers in the state. It is now mandatory that all Florida businesses selling hemp-derived products pass FDACS inspection to obtain a permit to sell CBD.

This new legislation allows the FDACS to ensure that all Florida businesses selling CBD adhere to stringent cultivation, processing, and labeling rules, while inspections allow the FDACS to determine whether a business’s products are safe, legitimate, and accurately labeled.

These regulations represent a major advancement towards ensuring consumer safety and enforcing retailer transparency, a much-needed measure for quality control in an otherwise unregulated market oversaturated with illegitimate, if not dangerous, CBD products.

With this bill, the FDACS has incorporated all CBD products into existing food safety programs, while introducing new processing, cultivation, and mandatory labeling rules to focus on customer safety, quality control, and brand transparency. 

These regulations equip consumers with the information they need to differentiate quality, safe CBD products from their illegitimate, unsafe counterparts. Yet eighty-percent of retailers in North Central Florida have either foregone or failed FDACS inspection, which makes it essential to educate the community about these regulations, and to let them know that they can now ensure that they are buying CBD products from an approved, reliable vendor. 

Your CBD Store is dedicated to educating customers and equipping them with the information they need to make safe, informed choices when buying CBD. For this reason, Your CBD Store’s Gainesville location immediately embraced these opportunities, becoming the first business in Central Florida to pass inspection and obtain its permit to sell CBD. Yet given the continued distribution of unregulated products, it remains essential to spread the news about these regulations, and, in doing so, to empower consumers with one key question that can protect them from unsafe or illegitimate products: “Do you have a permit?” This should be the first question that every customer asks when they enter a CBD store; in doing so, they protect themselves from the large percentage of retailers in the area who have failed to comply with new FDACS laws. 

Likewise, it is imperative that local CBD businesses are aware of these new requirements, and that they undergo FDACS inspection to ensure that their CBD products adhere to regulations. By failing to do so, they put their companies--and, more importantly, their customers--at risk. In short: if your business does not have a permit, you should not be selling CBD products either in-store or online. 

A lack of awareness about this legislation also puts local retailers at risk, particularly those who distribute white-labeled, wholesale CBD products in Florida. White-labelling refers to the common practice of sourcing wholesale products from another company--typically obtained online, and possibly from an unregulated state--to relabel under their own name and sell at a retail location. By selling products cultivated and processed by large wholesale companies, CBD retailers risk selling unregulated products in a regulated state, and have no knowledge of how those products are processed and cultivated; whether they contain traces of harmful chemicals or pesticides; whether they exceed the legal limit of 0.3% THC; and whether they contain the CBD and other cannabinoid content advertised by the wholesaler. 

Ultimately, whether the CBD products that retailers sell are their own or another company’s, all CBD retailers must undergo FDACS inspection due to these new mandatory laws for the distribution of ingestible CBD products. 

Your CBD Store hopes to aid both customers and local businesses in complying with and embracing these new regulations. If you or someone you know currently sells wholesale CBD and needs help with the permitting process, Your CBD Store’s team of experts would be happy to share any helpful information, or tell you whether your CBD products will pass FDACS inspection. 

*Your CBD Store also offers a wholesale program that may be of interest to Florida businesses who hope to adjust to these new regulations by selling wholesale products that have already been FDACS approved. If you would like to wholesale award-winning Sunmed CBD products--which passed inspection shortly after this new legislation was passed--feel free to contact Your CBD Store, which offers a wholesale program that includes free staff education and will your customer service free of charge. For wholesale information and related inquiries, contact Your CBD Store owner Dr. Oliva at (342) 444 1250. Alternatively, visit our website at https://www.yourcbdstore.me/.