Will CBG Surpass CBD Sales?
CBD, accepted as a household name and a staple of the natural health movement, isn’t going anywhere. Interest is growing, though, in other cannabinoids found in hemp that might be just as useful — or even more useful — for certain conditions and purposes.
Brands that previously specialized exclusively in CBD are now clamoring for bulk CBG isolate and other forms of CBG, a non-intoxicating hemp cannabinoid that has recently grown in popularity at an almost alarming rate. What is CBG, and why is this cannabinoid so perfectly poised to take the world of natural health by storm? Find out in this guide.
Is the CBD Industry Slowing Down?
Yes, it is undeniable that the CBD industry is no longer growing as quickly as it once did. New markets that are still naive to cannabis in general still show a lot of room for CBD sales growth, but markets in cannabis-accepting areas of the country show stagnating CBD year-over-year growth numbers.
What Is CBG?
Cannabigerol (CBG) is, like CBD, naturally found in Cannabis sativa. In fact, the chemical precursor to CBG, CBGA, is believed to be the origin molecule for most popular cannabinoids, including CBD and THC.
That’s part of why CBG has become popular recently: Biotech companies are investigating potential methods of cannabinoid synthesis that require massive quantities of CBGA. In the consumer sphere too, though, CBG is also undeniably becoming popular at a rapid clip.
Is CBG Becoming Popular?
Yes, there’s no way to spin the latest numbers provided by market analyst BDSA as anything but supportive of CBG’s massively swelling popularity. In this late 2022 report, BDSA showed how CBG sales skyrocketed year-over-year in states where cannabis is the most popular.
Here’s the raw data:
- Colorado: CBG sales +1251%
- Oregon: CBG sales +1185%
- Nevada: CBG sales +1105%
- California: CBG sales +655%
You don’t need to be a genius market analyst to gape at those numbers. Anyone should be stunned when a product category grows by over ten times in a year. It truly appears that 2022 will hitherto be known as the year that CBG finally caught on in the mainstream of culture.
Will CBG Become More Popular than CBD?
It’s anyone’s guess as to whether CBG will one day outstrip CBD in terms of popularity. Right now, the international CBG industry is orders of magnitude smaller than the CBD equivalent.
Viewed from another perspective, however, that means CBG has at least that much room to grow. Why shouldn’t CBG be its own $4 billion industry in a few years? Why not $10 billion?
Benefits of CBG vs. CBD
CBG is different enough from CBD to seem like a separate substance without being disconcertingly unfamiliar. Both cannabinoids are non-intoxicating, but researchers are particularly interested in CBG’s usefulness for pain, neurological issues, and bacterial infections.
CBD, on the other hand, is primarily in-demand for its perceived pain-fighting, relaxing, and insomnia-beating virtues. Used in combination CBD and CBG may offer a wider range of complementary benefits than each individual cannabinoid could hope to provide on its own.
A Shared Future for CBD and CBG
Instead of seeing CBG and CBD as being at odds with each other, it’s best to view the two cannabinoids as separate facets of one fascinating plant. Since it was already abundantly present in most species of hemp, CBD was naturally the first hemp cannabinoid to become popular, but clearly, it will not be the last.
Rather than precluding any future hemp cannabinoids from also becoming popular, CBD opened the door for additional compounds like CBG, CBN, and CBC to attain widespread acceptance. Now that average people know about the good CBD can do, they’re much more willing to accept additional hemp substances than they would have been as cannabinoid-naive shoppers.
Over time, it’s most likely that CBD, CBG, and additional hemp cannabinoids will reach approximately equal status within the natural health community — each according to the scope and strength of their benefits. Perhaps we might eventually find that CBD is, overall, more useful than CBG, or perhaps the opposite will be the case.
The only way to find out is to continue growing the hemp cannabinoid industry. Now that CBD has done all the heavy lifting of normalizing hemp, it wouldn’t be surprising if CBG’s sales one day surpassed CBD’s.
