Hemp, I’d like you to meet Marijuana. She’s going to introduce you to her friend, Cannabis Investor, who will show you life in the fast lane…
For the past century, hemp has been minding its own business, quietly supplying the world with relatively mundane products like rope, textiles, protein, and vegetable oil. Now, with the wave of medical and recreational marijuana legalization that’s sweeping America, that is changing. Legal cannabis has become the fastest growing market in America. And hemp is now coming along for the wild ride.
The boom in medical and recreational marijuana has been a big attraction to investors, while at the same time being a serious turnoff for investors and entrepreneurs who don’t want to be involved in the drama and legalities surrounding marijuana. But, with all the attention that medical marijuana is enjoying, it’s becoming clear that many of the medicinal benefits of cannabis can be had without the buzz and the legal worries. Enter cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabinoid extracted from agricultural hemp rather than marijuana.
Hemp CBD is suddenly getting serious attention from health food entrepreneurs who would never consider investing in marijuana. One such entrepreneur is, Tapio Maki who is the founder of Smart Salt, a reduced sodium mineral salt used in processed foods. Maki’s latest venture, CBD Incorporated, was founded specifically to produce CBD from hemp. The new company is currently raising capital to build a mass production facility in Portugal.
I sat with Tapio to talk about CBD’s attraction as an alternative investment to medical marijuana. Here’s what he had to say.
I know you’re dead set against investing in either medical or recreational marijuana. What got you interested in investing in CBD?
Maki: I follow health food industry news. I kept seeing reports about the medical marijuana “Green Rush.” I didn’t give it much consideration because I don’t want to get involved in the legalities and controversy of marijuana. But then I started to notice reports about CBD, which has many of the same benefits of THC but without the high. CBD can actually be extracted more efficiently from agricultural hemp than from marijuana. After doing some more research, I realized that CBD is in a period of exponential growth that will not slow down any time soon. I believe it’s a better investment than marijuana.
What were the pros and cons for you of getting into the hemp business?
The “pros” to me are that I’m certain that the sales of CBD products are going to explode in the coming years. The vast majority of people who are into alternative, natural cures don’t want to be high all the time. I did some math based on industry projections and saw that by 2020, the total global cannabis market – hemp and marijuana-related products – could exceed 100 billion dollars. And, although the vast majority of that is currently for marijuana-based products, interest in CBD’s medical benefits is spreading so quickly that the CBD market is going to become a much more substantial percentage of the cannabis market than it is today.
The cons are that some investors see the word “cannabis” or they see a pot leaf and they think, “oh, marijuana,” and don’t want to get involved. Even the media keeps lumping hemp CBD into medical marijuana because that’s the hot story. But hemp CBD has nothing to do with marijuana and getting high, and everything to do with health.
You had originally planned to buy and sell CBD rather than producing it. What changed your mind to consider mass production? And why Portugal?
After leaving my full time position with Smart Salt, I spent a few years sailing, all the time following the market news. I made made landfall in Portugal in 2013 with plans to continue around the Mediterranean. While I was in Portugal I started talking to my European business associates about CBD and hemp. As it turns out, Portugal is an ideal place to grow hemp. It has a climate very similar to California, abundant sunshine and rain, affordable and highly productive farm land. And CBD extraction is legal. It also turns out that you can’t sell CBD nationwide in the US if it’s not imported. Production became a viable option if we set up shop in Portugal and import to the US.
Your company is investing heavily in extraction technology. How did you come to the decision to develop your own technology to produce CBD rather than using existing technology?
For one thing, we plan to produce a very high volume of organic CBD and want environmentally friendly technology that’s tailored to our operation. More importantly, we also plan to be a top name in high volume extraction technology and license our technology to other growers as a major source of revenue. We call our product the ‘Liquid Gold Factory.’ A valuable side benefit is that if the price of CBD starts to go down – which will only happen if more and more companies start producing CBD – we’ll be making up the difference by selling more technology.
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As part of their fundraising efforts, CBD Inc. is offering CBD resellers a lifetime supply of CBD. Pre-order up to 4 kilos of CBD and get the same amount every year, forever. For more info go to https://www.cbdincorporated.com/get-lifetime-supply-cbd/
MAPH Enterprises, LLC | (305) 414-0128 | 1501 Venera Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33146 | new@marijuanastocks.com
