How the experience of the UK CBD market is useful for the national consumer
In pursuit of profit in one of the most promising cannabinoid markets in Europe, companies specializing in the production of CBD products use various kinds of manipulation or openly deceive government agencies in order to sell the CBD products they produce. There is no doubt that if enterprises specializing in the production of CBD products allow themselves to deceive the UK government structures, their sales policy or activities to regulate their stay on the Ukrainian market will be something different.
Bringing order to the unregulated CBD market in the UK, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) of the country is conducting several stages of checking the safety of CBD products for the health of consumers. Checking the legality of sales in the United Kingdom of "new products" is carried out in two stages:
1. confirmation of the fact of sales of CBD products before February 13, 2020;
2. conducting research on the safety for the human body of specific CBD products.
Accustomed to reviewing “new products” on a case-by-case basis and anticipating a large number of applications for inclusion on the CBD product list, the Agency has formulated a policy in this matter, which is based on the honesty and goodwill of market participants. In fact, during the first stage, the FSA made a key bet on informing the applicant companies of the Agency that their products were sold before February 13, 2020 on the basis of a simple application form of paperwork. CBD products that have passed the Agency's pre-test and are currently on the public list should have been on sale on that date - a key criterion for entering the FSA's screening system to ensure the safety of "new products" and to ensure that these products can remain for sale in the UK market while their application is being reviewed by FSA officials.
According to Linden Jack, the FSA's Deputy Director of Food Policy, the required documentation includes: "Evidence supporting pre-existing status, including receipts, contracts or invoices for CBD products, which may indicate the product and the date it was sold on the UK market. Hemp business representatives were also required to sign a declaration that all evidence provided of their activities and sales of CBD products in the United Kingdom prior to 02/13/20 is correct.
Both FSA officials and British cannabis market analysts, based on ordinary logic, state that more than 12,000 CBD products (the number currently published on the FSA website) listed for review by the Agency and declared as “new products” could not be on UK store shelves until February 2020. According to FSA officials, even a cursory review of documents characterizing individual CBD products suggests that they were not present on the market in February 2020.
Already, FSA officials are saying that hundreds of CBD products will certainly not pass rigorous toxicology testing, THC minimum limits, and other technical checks. In addition, a significant number of them will be delisted without consideration, as there is a forgery associated with the claim that CBD products of individual companies were present on the UK market until February 2020.
Commentary of the specialists of the “Ukrainian Industrial Hemp Association”
The FSA, which needs to address consumer safety threats as the semi-legal market for CBD products has expanded uncontrollably, duly announced its 2020 “new product” criteria approval process and allowed sufficient notice time long before the application deadline of March 31, 2021 of the year. Those companies that followed the FSA's recommendations submitted a total of 70 applications, covering 3,536 products, by the initial deadline set by government officials. Over the course of 18 months, FSA officials evaluated the safety of CBD products and announced in October 2021 that they had rejected approximately 650 CBD products, approving only 43 products in total (some CBD products remained under review by the FSA).
When the initial FSA list was made public at the end of February of this year, individual companies not included in the list put pressure on FSA officials to revise the overall list, and a number of enterprises that had never filed such an application demanded participation in the process. allegations, calling into question the credibility of the compilation of the list. The FSA has "extended" the previously set filing deadline from March 2021 by more than a year, to May 26 this year. During this time period, the number of CBD products passing the first round of validation almost doubled, adding 2,445 products to the original 3,536 that were already in the works, doubling the number to around 6,000. Then, after a new deadline was announced, the list doubled again in a subsequent revision by the FSA. released in early July 2022 as the total number of “new products” being tested increased to over 12,000.
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