Soil to Oil: Vertical Integration and the Audacity of Higher Expectations (Part 2 - CBDecisions)

Part II shifts focus from federal legislation to the marketplace, revealing the painful truth that, after years of expansion, the CBD business in 2025 remains fundamentally unstable, poorly regulated, and dominated by bulk isolates and white-label manufacture. Laboratory tests, including JAMA's 2020 review, continue to demonstrate considerable mislabeling, with products having considerably less or significantly more CBD than promised, as well as detectable THC that should not be present in officially compliant hemp.  

Against this backdrop, a few companies stand out as exceptions, impressively! With vertically integrated, whole-plant, solvent-free extraction technology, one company called Sunsoil in Vermont shows us that reliability is action, and those activities do the marketing for them. The disparity between what is standard practice and what is necessary for systemic legitimacy is apparent in this case study.

Vertical integration and lab reporting aren't glamorous, but they're remarkable decisions. They are remarkable in that they center their work on quality standards while unintentionally exposing the greater reliance on bulk processing and marketing marshmallows.

Part II looks at Sunsoil as a comparison to demonstrate that CBD's credibility dilemma is the market's current operational situation, and it doesn't have to be this way. Integrity is not a branding effort in this context; it is an organizational decision at the fulcrum.