CBD is a very popular tool for health supplementation that has only recently become a legally viable option. For many years, CBD was an illegal substance due to its origin in the cannabis plant. Despite having no psychoactive properties, CBD inherited the reputation of marijuana as a recreational drug in the eyes of many. For this reason, CBD was outlawed for many years until the medicinal benefits and chemical profile became more apparent as time went on. Nowadays, CBD has become more accepted in the medicinal and legal worlds, with the substance becoming legal in many places for health supplementation.
However, the problem with the legality of CBD is that it falls to each state to determine what is legal when it comes to CBD. This means CBD might be legal in one state but not the other. It can even limit how you can purchase a legal substance, such as restricting it to an in-person vendor or allowing online purchases. Florida, in particular, has always been of concern when it came to the introduction of new legislation. This state was once very opposed to introducing CBD products, which begs the question of whether it is now legal to purchase CBD within Florida’s borders. This article will help to answer that very question.
Is CBD Legal in Florida?
The good news is that CBD products are completely legal in Florida. However, this development was a recent one. Florida only saw fit to legalize CBD as a medicinal tool in March 2019 when the Florida government passed a bill that authorized Florida citizens to take advantage of smokable marijuana for medicinal purposes.
However, this was taken a step further in January 2020 when Florida also legalized the purchase and use of CBD and hemp products for medicinal use. This put Florida in the back ranks of states willing to allow CBD products for medicinal use.
The earliest CBD and marijuana legalization records date to 1996, when California passed Proposition 215. While it took Florida 24 years to catch up, the fact remains that CBD is now an authorized tool for medicinal use in the state. Granted, there are some regulations to limit CBD abuse within state borders. However, most of the restrictions have to do with the chemical composition of the CBD vendors are trying to sell, specifically regarding the concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. As far as Florida is concerned, any CBD products being sold must not exceed a maximum percentage of 0.3% THC to be legally marketed.
THC is the psychoactive compound of cannabis plants, so this is a very beneficial requirement for health supplements. Otherwise, any CBD product used for pain management or anxiety would intoxicate the user.
Despite the THC restriction, the user must also be at least 18 years old to use the CBD product. However, these restrictions are strictly about the regulations that go into creating CBD supplements that are allowed to be sold on the state’s market. We still need to discuss the ways you can purchase such supplements.
For the most part, when people think of purchasing CBD, or any product derived from cannabis plants, they think of going to a dispensary. However, the rise of online markets for CBD has been on the horizon for some time. The question is whether Florida law allows online CBD markets to operate within its borders.
Can CBD Supplements Be Purchased Online?
We live in an era where online shopping has become the standard since it enables us to find any product we need from the comfort of our homes. As a result, we generally default to websites like Amazon for groceries and other general items when thinking of online markets. Given that the legalization of CBD products is still a relatively new development, there is some concern that states that were late to the party, so to speak, might not allow such online vending.
Fortunately, you can safely put such fears to rest for residents of Florida. Online shopping for CBD supplements was made just as legal as walking into a dispensary for your needs. The only condition is that the supplements sold from the online vendor must meet the chemical requirements set forth by Florida law. This essentially translates to making sure that the product does not have a THC concentration exceeding the 0.3% maximum. So long as the vendor you intend to go through can prove that their products meet the health requirements of Florida law, then the purchase of their product online is legal.
This requirement is not even one dictated by the Florida state government. The federal government is what regulates the vending of CBD products via an online medium so long as the above requirements are met. That said, the regulations limit the platforms authorized to host CBD products. Vendors who post their CBD products on a third party site must follow that website’s regulations on approved products. As far as government regulation goes, they require that you adhere to the rules of the third party retailer.
The following platform regulations are as follows:
- Shopify: Shopify only authorized U.S.-based vendors to sell CBD products, and the CBD must be derived from hemp and not marijuana.
- Tophatter: Tophatter only allows the sale of CBD oil.
- Magneto: Magneto allows CBD products in general.
- Shift4Shop: Shift4Shop allows CBD products in general.
- BigCommerce: BigCommerce only allows the sale of hemp-based CBD products.
Conversely, mainstream online vendors like eBay and Amazon prohibit the sale of all CBD products. While these platforms are not federally mandated to take these stances, your vendor must obey the regulations set forth by these platforms to sell their product legally. However, most vendors will have a personal website to sell their products rather than relying on a 3rd party.
This means that you will need to do your due diligence before blindly purchasing a new product with which you are unfamiliar. Thankfully, verifying the quality of a product coming from a reputable vendor has never been easier, thanks to the use of a laboratory-backed evaluation of the products.
Verify the Certificates of Analysis
We have repeatedly said this, but verifying the analysis certificates associated with a CBD product is extremely important. The certificate of analysis, or COA, is a page attached to many reputable CBD products by the vendors to reassure the potential buyer that the ingredients found within are safe and within the bounds of the law. COAs are created when a vendor of the CBD sends a batch of their product into a sanctioned laboratory to have the chemical composition of the CBD examined with the utmost scrutiny. This way, the vendor will be able to track the exact levels of THC, contaminants, and CBD variants within their product to the exact percentage.
Contaminants are always a risk when growing plants like cannabis. Heavy metals, pesticides, and fungal infestations can all compromise the quality of the plant from which your supplement is being created. A COA would analyze the levels of all of these factors in the supplements before they ever hit the shelves to ensure no risk of harm. This helps prevent unintended health issues from taking a CBD supplement.
However, the part that helps keep the CBD in line with Florida state law has to do with the COA’s ability to determine the level of THC in the supplement. By reviewing the COA, you can ensure that the THC levels are 0.3% or lower so that you do not try to purchase an illegal product.
In addition to making sure that you purchase a safe and legal product, COAs are remarkably easy to access in online shops. Some of the most reliable vendors will offer COAs covering an entire batch of CBD products rather than individual packages, assuring that the entire range in stock will satisfy Florida law and not introduce any unwanted substances to your body. However, we feel there is another question worth addressing regarding the legality of CBD products within Florida’s borders.
Do You Need a License To Use CBD?
The issuance of licenses to use certain products is not an unfamiliar practice to anyone. After all, most Americans carry licenses to drive their cars. So, you might have heard about the infamous medical marijuana cards that were issued in states that legalized the use of marijuana for health reasons. These cards were meant to prove that you are authorized by state and federal law to smoke marijuana to reap the plant’s health benefits.
Currently, Florida is actively working to pass legislation that will authorize medical marijuana cards to cover the use of marijuana edibles as well. However, you might wonder if such a permit is necessary to use CBD products. Fortunately, there is good news.
According to Florida state law, possessing a medical marijuana card is not necessary to consume CBD health supplements. No licensing is required for consumers of CBD since there are no psychoactive effects available with CBD products. As a result, the consumer has no responsibility to acquire a license to use the product.
However, those who manufacture the product must be licensed to do so since they are selling a supplement that is meant to be a safe and legal product for their consumers. Depending on whether they are simply selling the product or growing the cannabis plants themselves, they will need to apply for specific permissions within the bounds of Florida law.
Those vendors who sell the product are only required to apply for a license to sell the CBD if it takes an ingestible form. For example, edibles and CBD oil require the vendor to apply for a license to vend the product and, in some cases, need a food permit to sell edible CBD products like baked goods. However, the ones growing the cannabis plants for harvest need to apply for several extra permits and licenses. Specifically:
- The growers must submit their fingerprints to a government database.
- The growers must observe specific environmental containment plans.
- The growers must observe specific cultivation procedures.
- The growers must transport the CBD in a specific manner.
These are only a few of the requirements expected of the growers of the cannabis plants being refined into CBD. Your vendor will only need a license to sell the product to you, but you will not need a license to buy from them. The only exception is if the CBD product is a topical application since they fall under the category of cosmetics. No license is required to sell cosmetic products, so CBD vendors will not need to register to sell them.
X-perience CBD
Despite some of the bad press that CBD has gotten over the years due to being derived from cannabis plants, it is legal in Florida. Even better, the vending of CBD through online stores is also legal as regulated by the federal government. The only trick is that the CBD must be produced within the bounds of the federally mandated regulations to be considered a legal product. If your vendor provides all the required information to assure you of this, you will be just fine buying from them if you are a resident of Florida. All you need to do is find a reputable vendor that offers a quality product at the end of the day.
To that end, we at Neuro XPF are here to help. We offer a wide selection of CBD products available in multiple forms. You can rest assured that any product you purchase from us is 100% safe and within the bounds of federal and Florida state law.
If you have concerns, feel free to check out the COAs attached to every one of our products to ensure that there is nothing in our supplements you do not want. On top of all that, our store is available online through a self-hosted page that you can access whenever you want without worrying about any law violations. So, if you are looking to dive into the world of CBD, be sure to check out our website today and x-perience the best CBD in the game.