By Sherry Jackson
“No, it won’t get you high,” says Brent Mann, president and owner of New World CBD, which has offices in Tempe and Oregon. “It’s the most common misconception that’s out there in the market today.”
After 30 years in the insurance business, Mann stumbled across the CBD industry after a good friend touted the health benefits. Mann, played football for Oregon State in his college days, has had seven knee surgeries and was looking for pain relief.
“I was looking for alternative ways to reduce my pain on a daily basis,” says Mann, who lives in Chandler. “I started taking CBD and noticed a dramatic change. I have found it relieves the sharp, shooting pains I was experiencing. I feel clear-headed and calm when taking CBD.”
He dove into researching the industry. “I wanted to validate it myself first,” he says. He read up on the anti-inflammatory health benefits of CBD along with studies pointing to the benefits for those with arthritis, cancers, insomnia, anxiety, depression and most diseases. CBD is increasingly used as an alternative to opioids, aspirin and other pain relievers which run through the kidneys and can cause other health issues. It’s also been proven safe for kids and pets to use.
Mann’s wife Nancy, who serves as the company’s vice president, is also a pediatric nurse and points to a study conducted by Phoenix Children’s Hospital on a child who was having epileptic seizures. After 24 hours of using CBD, the seizures subsided.
“It really helps with any trauma to the system,” she adds. “Free radicals. It works to keep it at bay. There are virtually no side effects and studies have shown you can’t overdose on it.”
After Brent was confident he understood the myths, benefits and challenges, he contacted his brother, Jerry Mann, who owns a farm in Dundee, Oregon. They partnered and instead of farming chickens, his brother started farming hemp, a much more lucrative farm crop.
“I wanted to control all aspects of the product,” Brent says. “There are a lot of companies and people out there making claims, but when their products are tested, they have little to no actual CBD. Roughly 85% of products are like that.”
With a company tagline of “from seed to you,” Jerry, started growing the plants in a 5,000-square-foot greenhouse. The plants go into the ground around June and are harvested in October. No pesticides are used in growing their hemp. New World CBD has a 6,000-square-foot processing facility in Salem, Oregon, with the capacity to process several hundred pounds a day of hemp flower into oil, yielding over 50,000 grams of CBD hemp oil per month. Mann started the company in June 2017 and August 2018 was the first full-production cycle.
Quality is important as is making sure customers know what they’re buying. “There’s another misnomer — that CBD comes from the seeds,” Brent says. “CBD comes from the actual flower, not the seed or stalk. If you’re buying something on Amazon that says hemp oil, that is not the same thing as CBD oil.”
After the CBD oil is processed, it’s then shipped to a bottling and headquarters in Tempe where New World CBD packages 24 different products ranging from oil tinctures, to balms, lotions and even a sleep drink. The company also sells products that are “broad spectrum” with other plant-based ingredients in addition to the CBD.
In addition to owning the process from beginning to end, the company has a proprietary formula that extracts the oils, fats and lipids.
“CBD oil is initially dark, like motor oil. Ours looks like honey. We don’t use any fillers or sweeteners,” Brent says. “There’s no bitter aftertaste.”
“It’s clean and it tastes good,” Nancy adds.
The company has the products tested through certified, third-party labs to ensure the quality.
Drew Hodson, a massage therapist for the past 25 years, says the quality and knowing “exactly where the product comes from” is what drew him to using New World CBD’s products. He’s been using CBD for about eight months and is also a sales representative for New World CBD.
“I was looking for something to alleviate pain from a herniated disc and chronic knee issues. My customers were also asking me what I knew about CBD,” Hodson says. “After about eight days of using CBD my knee pain was gone. After about 30 days my back pain subsided. I knew I was onto something special and I wanted to share it with my clients.”
Right now, the focus is on building the company and getting the brand out there, Mann says. New World CBD products are already in Albertsons and Safeway stores in the Southwest and will be expanding nationwide to more than 1,000 stores. They also have a distributor and partner system to sell at festivals and markets and are working on a program to bring their products to veterans.
There are challenges in the industry, of course, like any other new product or technology. Banks haven’t caught up to new regulations and finding one that will process credit card transactions for a CBD company can be challenging. But with the 2018 Farm Bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018 legalizing industrial hemp that has a THC concentration of no more than 0.3% and removes CBD from schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, and the recent FDA approval of Epidiolex, a pharmaceutical-grade version CBD oil used to treat children with epilepsy. In June, the FDA began the process to set new regulations for cannabis and cannabis products. The Manns are optimistic about the future of the CBD industry.
Brent encourages consumers to look at the research if someone is hesitant about what they are putting in their body. “It’s been proven to work,” he says. “It’s about increasing awareness and what CBD can do for people on an everyday basis.”
