Regulatory Challenges Facing CBD as a Food Ingredient in China

CBD (cannabidiol), a substance extracted from cannabis has been attracting considerable attention from multinational food enterprises due to its potential applications in foods. In 2018 Coca-Cola declared that it was considering using CBD in a functional health beverage and would cooperate with Aurora Cannabis Inc. (Canadian cannabis manufacturer) to develop a new cannabis beverage.
Molson Coors, the second largest beer company in North America, also announced it was collaborating with Canadian cannabis manufacturer Hydropothecary Corp. to develop a non-alcoholic cannabis beverage ^[1]. Bright Field Group, a leading predictive analytics and market research firm for legal Cannabis industries, anticipates that the CBD industry will hit 5.7 billion US dollar in 2019, and is expected to surge to 18.1 billion US dollar by 2021.

Since 2017 multiple countries have legalized the use of medical marijuana and CBD. Australia permitted the sale of food containing CBD in Nov. 2017. By the end of 2018, 33 states in America had already approved the use of medical marijuana and CBD. Korea and Thailand have also greenlighted the use of cannabis in medical applications. So how does China regulate cannabis and CBD and do current policies support the growth of this fledgling market.