Cannabidiol, or CBD, as it’s better known, was once only a concern of the most tiresome of stoners. Now you can find it in tampons, face creams, ice creams, hummus, water, and at Tesco. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry: the UK’s CBD market alone has been forecast to reach $1.2 billion by 2025.
Popularity of CBD
This explosion in popularity can be traced back, in the UK at least, to 2016, when the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) ruled that products containing cannabidiol used for medical purposes had to be classified as a medicine. This focus from the government kick-started a UK interest in the product, says Harry Sumnall, a professor in substance use at the Public Health Institute. “All of a sudden, there’s a lot of media articles,” he says – it catapulted CBD into the national consciousness. “That provided some really nice context to have that wider public discussion about CBD.”
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