Out and About
What a lovely and extremely interesting afternoon! Today was my first time heading out to an event ‘post-Covid’: The Society of Cosmetic Scientists’ Wales and West event on Beauty, Health and Wellbeing. It was so refreshing to be able to see familiar faces as well as get to know new people and welcome newcomers to the industry.
My official capacity for the afternoon was to host round table discussions on CBD and regulation. Some might wonder whether that boat has now sailed but truthfully, I believe this trend is here for a while yet. In particular, whilst the novel food issue has stalled innovation in the food sector, the next natural choice for consumers and businesses alike is to look to other sectors involved in wellbeing, i.e. cosmetics.
As I mentioned, my key objective was to talk about regulation. As many of you may know, when it comes to substance control (illicit drugs) the rules in many countries around the world originate from international conventions. But nationally rules can differ widely in scope and interpretation (even in the EU where countries have their own individual substance laws). So a truly global approach to CBD products can be difficult even when sector legislation is in place (as it is in the EU for cosmetics). Inevitably our discussions leaned towards the area of claims.
Firstly we talked about the topical functions of CBD and those that may be deemed medicinal. Of course, this isn’t a situation unique to CBD and when using known medicinal actives, extra care may be needed.
Again, not unique to CBD, we also touched on the topic of claim substantiation and the need to have data for the finished product claims.
Although cannabis (and by default also CBD) have been in use throughout history, formal data on its effects, especially for cosmetics, remains very limited. Earlier in the afternoon we heard from Majella Lane on skin penetration and it was particularly interesting to hear about the possibility that, owing to its high solubility in lipids, CBD might not easily penetrate the skin. It will certainly be interesting to see where this topic develops both in terms of potential efficacy and for the safe use of the ingredient.
Many thanks to everyone who participated in person and online and contributed to such an interesting afternoon.
Amanda Isom