Don’t Waste Your Money on CBD Water

There Are Some Fundamental Problems With CBD Water

CBD water is exactly what it sounds like — it’s a bottle of filtered water with CBD dissolved throughout. It’s marketed in the same way as alkaline or ionized water (which is also a scam).

Companies market these products as a way to treat chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia, and to promote overall “health and wellness.”

Here are the four biggest problems with CBD water that make it a poor product to spend your money on:

• They contain minimal quantities of CBD
• The CBD in water is exposed to light and quickly degrades
• They’re excessively overpriced
• They’re filled with exaggerated & unsubstantiated health claims

Let’s cover each one in a little more detail for those who disagree:

1. They Contain Minimal Amounts of CBD

CBD waters contain very low concentrations of CBD.

This isn’t because all CBD water brands are cheaping out on the amount of CBD they’re using; it’s because you simply can’t stuff very much CBD into a bottle of water even if you wanted to.

CBD is not water-soluble — which means it doesn’t dissolve into the water very easily. If too much is added, it will just fall out of the solution and settle on the bottom.

CBD much prefers to dissolve into fats and oils — which is why the quintessential form of CBD is an infused oil.

A typical bottle of CBD water only provides about 10 or 20 mg of CBD in total. Any more than this would require a larger volume of water, or emulsifiers and other chemical additives.

I’ve seen companies that claim to add up to 300 mg per bottle but don’t offer any third-party tests to prove this is the true concentration in the water. I’m very skeptical about the accuracy of these claims.

You can find a type of CBD called “nano CBD,” which involves breaking pure CBD crystals into even smaller pieces. While this helps it dissolve in water, it’s still very limited.

The strongest CBD water I could find delivers a potency of around 0.04 mg/mL of water. Compare this to CBD oils, which contain substantially more potency (up to 180 mg/mL).

2. CBD Degrades When Exposed to Light

Have you ever noticed that any CBD products you order come in a dark or completely opaque container or tincture bottle? Well, there’s actually a good reason for this.

CBD and all the other cannabinoids in hemp break down when exposed to light and oxygen. It’s critical to store CBD products in dark, sealed containers to limit the natural degradation and maintain the potency of the product over longer periods of time.

Suspending CBD in a clear bottle of water, which then spends several days, weeks, or months on a store shelf under artificial lighting, virtually destroys all the active ingredients before you ever crack the seal.

3. It’s Overpriced For What You Get

CBD water is expensive.

If you’re looking for an excuse to spend upwards of $4 on a bottle of filtered water — CBD water may be for you.

There are two factors that could justify some of the high cost of CBD water:

• Water is heavy — which increases the cost of shipping
• Water takes up a lot of space — which makes it more expensive to store

Outside of these factors, there isn’t much reason for these products to be so expensive. Water itself is cheap, and the amount of CBD used in the formula is cheap as well.

Bulk CBD usually costs manufacturers about 2 or 3 cents per milligram. The average CBD water goes for closer to 40 cents per milligram on the retail side.

The truth is, even if we could justify the high cost of these products, it doesn’t deliver much value to you, the consumer — especially when you compare it to other product categories.

CBD oils are the most common form of using the supplement — they cost more upfront but deliver significantly more value for the money. Even if we don’t account for the fact that the listed concentration of CBD on a bottle of CBD water is likely to be much lower in reality, the cost per milligram of CBD oils is less than half the cost per milligram of CBD in water.

Comparing the cost of CBD water to other product types:

4. Most of the Companies Selling CBD Water Use Scammy Marketing Techniques

Exaggerated claims are abundant in the CBD space, to begin with — but it’s especially prevalent in the CBD water space.

The main claim companies are making relates to the bioavailability of their products because they’re using “nano-CBD.” The idea is that by making the particles of CBD smaller, they’re more readily absorbed by the digestive tract.

There’s some truth to this, but it’s limited. The difference isn’t enough to reasonably make some of the claims I’ve seen CBD water brands advertising.

For example, a company claiming their 2.5 mg CBD water has the equivalent of 25 mg of CBD because it’s “water-soluble” is categorically wrong.

Even if CBD was more bioavailable in a nano form, it’s still just as easy to take a higher dose of regular CBD in products like CBD oils, capsules, or gummies.

The other claims to watch out for revolve around the medical applications. CBD water is not a medical treatment. They aren’t suitable to use as a treatment for any medical condition. They’re not strong enough and not reliable enough to realistically make claims like this — yet, it’s not hard to find strong health claims from CBD water brands around the treatment of cancer, pain, inflammation, anxiety, and much more.

Strong health claims like this from any CBD company should be a red flag. Order from companies that are honest about what their products can (and can’t) do.