Hemp oil is coming to a chemist near you
As hemp-based CBD oil launches in chemists, Guy Kelly visits the secret Irish farm growing more than just asparagus
In County Louth, a coastal area in the north-east corner of Ireland, local farmers have tended to be traditional about the crops they plant. The smallest county either side of the border is no more than 320 square miles, though the land is as fertile as any around: an afternoon’s ramble might take you past fields of potatoes or asparagus, garlic, or spring crops such as wheat, barley, rape and beans. It’s all standard fare, but recently, keen-eyed walkers may have spotted a different, potentially eyebrow-raising addition to this ancient landscape – fields upon fields of lush green hemp.
“Looks very like something else, doesn’t it?” says Joe Gavin, CEO and co-founder of Celtic Wind Crops, running his hand over a few stalks in one plot. It’s true: hemp’s pointed leaves, a variety of the Cannabis sativa plant, are recognisable from altogether different scenarios, such as the branding on dubious-looking Amsterdam coffee shops, or knockoff Bob Marley memorabilia. They certainly don’t look like they’d be growing here, near the Cooley mountains. He chuckles. “You wouldn’t be the first to say it.
But as the farmers up here say, if you set fire to a field of hemp and lie down, you won’t get a very good smoke out of it…”
A burly Dubliner, Gavin is one of an increasing number of savvy entrepreneurs and agriculturalists growing and producing CBD oil, the wellness industry’s latest much-hyped, healthgiving elixir, which today launches in Lloyds Pharmacy stores around the UK – the first time a national UK pharmacy has offered CBD products.
Extracted from the hemp plant, CBD – or to give it its proper name, cannabidiol – is often confused with its cousin, cannabis oil, but has none of the latter’s mind-altering elements or addictive properties. In fact, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in cannabis, is found in such tiny amounts in CBD oil that there is no high whatsoever.
Instead, believers in the brown tincture claim it can help with all manner of ailments. Anxiety, arthritis, general lethargy, stress, irritable bowel syndrome, pain relief, epilepsy, and even cancer – there are people who take drops of the (entirely legal) CBD oil as a food supplement.
Even in the face of scant medical research – which thus far only supports its efficacy against epilepsy, though it is a known antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antispasmodic agent – most users swear by it.
Americans certainly do. Across the pond, where the CBD industry is expected to be worth $2billion by 2022, lifestyle experts have been extolling the oil’s benefits for years, especially in the 30 states where cannabis has been legalised. Celebrities lead the way: Morgan Freeman takes it for his fibromyalgia, Kristen Bell uses it to calm her nerves, and Jennifer Aniston says it alleviates “pain, stress and anxiety”.
Celtic Wind Crops, a company Gavin set up in 2012 with managing director Paul Mccourt, can’t legally make any claims about CBD’S medical benefits, no matter how much positive customer feedback they’ve had. Like others in the industry – including Dutch brand Jacob Hooy, which launched in Holland & Barrett in January – they must instead sell their oils, capsules and powders as food supplements. After almost two years operating in Ireland and online, the Lloyds launch is a major step.
Standing beside Gavin in the field in County Louth, Mccourt may not be able to speak about health benefits, but he’s certainly able to explain what makes Celtic Wind’s products different from the dozens of others jostling for place in the new market.
“Most of the CBD products on the shelves – whether they’re official or more from the black market side – tend to be extracts that lift CBD out of the hemp leaves, pop it in a coconut oil or an olive oil, and call that a CBD product,” he says. “We don’t do that, we get the whole 2ft head of the plant, squeeze that, and gently press that oil into the bottle.”
The benefit of doing it this way, he says, is that CBD oil is far more effective when it is left “untampered” with and separated from its complex natural composition in the hemp crop. And as the body is filled with “cannabinoid receptors”, it’s well worth leaving it alone. At a secure and unmarked depot facility nearby, the hemp grain is dried, stabilised, sieved and bagged within eight hours of harvesting – then, using a unique laboratory process workers call “the secret sauce”, the oil is pressed and bottled on site.
As it uses no herbicides, pesticides or fungicides either, consumers interested in Celtic Wind’s 5% CBD Oil at Lloyds can be certain that the
‘We give the dog CBD powder every day. She’s five years past her sell-by date’
murky liquid is, in fact, 100 per cent natural and traceable to the County Louth fields. They’re also gluten-free and vegan, for what it’s worth.
That transparency is unlikely to be available from the rash of other companies suddenly creating Cbdinfused products. The most common method of taking it is as drops under the tongue each morning or evening, or a powder on your porridge, yet in the coming months you can expect to see Cbd-infused coffees, waters, soft drinks (Coca-cola is already planning it), soaps, moisturisers, sprays and various edible foodstuffs on the market.
Gavin estimates he’s taken more than 1,000 customer calls from his Dublin office over the past 18 months, one of which would have been from Mike Rees, a 75-year-old retired businessman from Co Cork. Rees, his wife Glenis, 70, and even their Newfoundland dog all take CBD products every day, and have done for more than a year. He came across Celtic Wind in a health shop nearby, hoping it’d help his severe arthritis and lack of energy – the latter a by-product from a triple bypass and having “seven stents in the old ticker”. He now takes it twice a day.
“You don’t notice a massive change when you take it, but it’s gradual, and then if you come off it you notice the great help it was giving you,” he says. “I’m 75 and I can be up all day, walking the dog, going shopping, mowing the lawn… that’s not normal in my condition, and I put it down to this.” Even the dog has perked up. “We put the powder in her dry food every day and, well, she’s 13 and massive. Five years past her sell-by date.” A few friends looked at him with “a bit of a side glance” when they heard about the product, assuming it was “the backroom of a Soho club stuff ”, but that stigma is one Celtic Wind is constantly battling against. It may not be entirely helpful that the laws around cannabis products are being relaxed – from next Thursday, doctors will be able to prescribe medical cannabis to patients after the outcry over two young epilepsy sufferers were denied cannabis oil – but Mccourt is hopeful that shifting perceptions can only help. “Marketing can be challenging, we know that, but in reality hemp is a different plant, an ancient one that was grown for centuries before it was associated with drugs, and what we sell is not what many people think it is,” he says. “Hopefully if people know where it’s coming from, and what’s in it, they’ll appreciate what an amazing plant this is.”