Are CBD products still worth the hype?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Ankit Shah* (name changed), a 38-year-old Mumbai-based IT professional, suffers from acute shoulder pain due to a past injury and takes CBD oil (from BOHECO) to relieve pain. He shares that he only takes it on days when the pain is unbearable or on days when he hasn’t slept well.

Shah says that he'd recommend CBD products for stress and pain relief and assures that it's not habit-forming. “I only use it on a need-to basis," he says. Ramesh S* (name changed on request), a 31-year-old Bengaluru-based writer, began using a CBD oil in 2019 to help him get restful sleep after seeing it advertised on Instagram.

“I found it greatly improved my sleep and I'd wake up feeling rested," he recalls of the initial days. Shah and Ramesh are just examples of consumers in India who are openly embracing CBD wellness products as a natural alternative for managing niggline issues like stress, sleep, and chronic pain. If one had to trace back the rise of CBD products in the country, in 2018, Uttarakhand became the first state in India to legalise industrial hemp farming, Uttar Pradesh followed suit, and recently, Himachal Pradesh has legalised it.

In the same year, the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy), started handing out licenses for sale of cannabis and derived products— in the form of oils and tablets— for medicinal use. And in 2021, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) stated that the sale of hemp seeds and related products is standardised under the Food Safety and Standards Regulations 2011. Since 2018, several direct-to-consumer (D2C) companies like BOHECO, Qurist and Awshad among others that sell CBD oils and pills have come up.