CEO Anthony Phillips of Pure Source Labs
As you may already know, CBD oil can be vaped but maybe you don’t know enough about CBD and the variations to make an informed decision as to whether it is right for you and if so what type is the better option for you. Our very own Big Bud sat down for an Interview with Anthony Phillips, the CEO of Pure Source Labs, where all these questions are answered.
Continue to read the transcript of the Interview below with Anthony Philips, a well known expert on CBD.
Or if you prefer you can watch the complete interview on our You Tube channel. ( Make sure you give as a thumbs up and share with your friends!)
Big Bud: Hi there. This is Anthony Philips from Pure Source Labs, is that right?
Anthony Phillip: That’s correct.
Big Bud: Okay. And where’s Pure Source Labs located, Anthony?
Anthony Phillip: We are located in northern California. I myself am in Florida right now, but I was born out there and I have a lot of family out there. We started really getting into the cannabis industry about 2016, but we quickly moved over into the hemp CBD realm, just because of the results we were seeing. So our headquarters is out there, up in the redwoods.
Big Bud: Okay, so that’s interesting. Maybe you can explain for our viewers the difference between CBD oil or hemp oil or any cannabis product. Because I’m familiar somewhat with the difference, but I’ll bet a lot of people don’t really catch onto that. Maybe you can give us that.
Anthony Phillip: Yeah, so a lot of people are familiar with hearing THC. So that’s how they … What people would know as marijuana, that strain of cannabis that’s very popular for using for recreational use, that’s become also popular lately for health reasons. You can extract CBD from the marijuana plant, which is different in a lot of ways than hemp, even though they are related. People have been doing this, they’ve been extracting THC and CBD and using it in places where it was legal medically, and then recreationally, but over the past few years, with the wide availability of hemp, people realized that you could get CBD, one of the compounds in marijuana, from hemp as well.
Anthony Phillip: Because of its availability, you started to see it being a lot more available to people across state lines, and different areas and places that maybe didn’t have recreational or medical marijuana. So hemp opened that door for bringing it to people. The way it stands now is hemp has become more legal, more available, and more widely accepted. But still, if CBD is taken from a marijuana plant, it’s only legal in a state that allows recreational or medical marijuana, whereas hemp is basically legal everywhere now.
Anthony Phillip: As long as the CBD is extracted from the plant, which … Hemp is known for not having a lot of the psychoactive chemical THC in it. That’s why it’s popular and why it’s available, for people seeking that medical use and without getting what people would call the high from THC.
Big Bud: Now, you mentioned something about … The results you were seeing led you into this … arm of the industry. Can you give me a little more on that?
Anthony Phillip: Yeah, so it started with me, really. I was attending a cannabis conference in southern Florida, and I saw they had CBD everywhere and this was back in 2016. I was like, “How do they have this here? How is this possible?” And they said it was from hemp. I’m obviously very skeptical about these things, so I actually tried it. I got some gummies and tried it and I found that I slept incredibly well. I was like, “Wow! This seems like something amazing.” So I started educating myself on it more.
Anthony Phillip: I started buying CBD products for people that I knew and just giving it to them. Friends, family, I was like, “Please! Try this and let me know … ” Whether they had pain, sleep issues, stress … and the feedback that I was getting was always the same. I was waiting for someone to say, “Nah, I didn’t notice anything.” But everybody was very positive and they were like, “Wow, I slept amazing!” Or, “I stopped taking my pain meds,” and all these crazy stories that just seemed too good to be true. So I realized we really needed to add this as part of what we were doing in the cannabis space, and it’s really become the focus of what we’re doing.
Anthony Phillip: Our grandparents and my mother and aunts and uncles, a lot of these people who are taking it would never go to a dispensary or wouldn’t touch marijuana, so to speak, but the CBD was very acceptable to them. So we continue to see results. I just was on a phone call with somebody the other day whose uncle has cancer, and he’s actually taking less opioids now because of using the CBD oil. It’s helping him manage his pain in a way that he can actually reduce those dangerous drugs.
Anthony Phillip: I hear stories like that every day and it just never ceases to amaze me, the feedback that we get.
Big Bud: I understand … I heard you mentioned that you used it in a gummy bear or some sort of gummy product. How else can you use this product?
Anthony Phillip: Probably the best and most well known way is with sublingual drops that are usually in an oil base. That absorbs quickly into your system, it works fast, you get a lot of it into your system. Gummy bears are another popular one. There are capsules people have but I found the [inaudible 00:07:35] from the capsules is not great. I think it’s just because it takes longer to get it going and your body breaks a lot of it down.
Anthony Phillip: Vape is very popular. A lot of people vape it for stress. Just in the middle of the day, take a quick puff and they’re great. One of our most popular things that we use is topical pain rubs, and those are very popular, seem to work very well. People love them. They love using them in combination with the drops, especially athletes. We have a lot of athletes that will take the drops and use the topical pain, but-
Big Bud: I’ve also seen this in cosmetic products of various kinds. Is that something that you guys also get into?
Anthony Phillip: yes, we do. We have some interesting things in a month or so that we’ll be launching. It’s all top secret right now, but we do have a lot of skin care items, and next weekend we’re doing a show in northern California. It’s a beauty show, and CBD is great for the skin. Again, we see amazing results. Anti aging, anti inflammatory, and just the ability to use it for so many different things, because it just works so well with our [inaudible 00:08:46].
CBD Cosmetics from PureSource
Anthony Phillip: So, we have a whole range of skin care items, from cleaners to anti aging creams to body butters, massage oils. Just a lot of different things.
Big Bud: Great. Now, when you started this company, you started it as a cannabis company I guess. In order to make it, back then, anyway, legal, you wouldn’t be able to have THC in your product. I suppose at this point, now that you’re into CBD oil, you do some sort of verification that your CBD oil indeed is pure CBD oil, rather than THC mixed in.
Anthony Phillip: Yeah, there is a legal allowable amount of THC, and it’s a trace amount. You do have to be careful. It has to be less than .3%. Many of the items we carry are isolate, which means they don’t have anything else in them. Some are full spectrum and they have other cannabinoids, but it is something you have to watch for. We test from the part where it comes from, the farm, the lab, and then the final products we test and we post them on our site too. So people can look, see what’s in them, and realize that they’re safe. They’re not going to be breaking any laws by using them.
Big Bud: How do you source the farm product? Who grows this stuff, besides the side of the road?
Anthony Phillip: It’s been growing … At first, a lot of people were getting it from Kentucky. Kentucky had a lot of hemp. We still get a lot of hemp from Kentucky. Colorado is a huge source of it. Oregon is a very good source. I just heard recently that northern Carolina is going to be doing a bunch of growing. We always pick the best possible growers that have good reviews. What we have now is from Kentucky … We have gotten some things from Colorado. California, we would love to start our own farm, but the laws in California are actually a little behind, surprisingly, when it comes to hemp.
Anthony Phillip: Even though they were very progressive and ahead of the curve with marijuana, when it comes to hemp, they seem to be behind everybody else. So they need to catch up. As soon as they do, I would love to do a farming operation in northern California and start growing our own CBD hemp plants, and ones that are heavy in CBG as well.
You can buy CBD products from PureSource Labs with this link.
Big Bud: Is there some … I guess we all know weed is a weed, and hemp is a weed too. Is there anything special about growing it, or can anybody just throw a few seeds in the ground and look for it to pop up sometime soon?
Anthony Phillip: Yeah, but the right seeds … The seeds are actually one of the big challenges, coming by the correct seeds. Being able to grow it somewhere, you’re going to need a lot of outdoor space. It does grow very large trees. You’re going to need a lot of it to extract the CBD. Unlike marijuana … Marijuana has a very high concentration of THC and CBD, or one or the either. But hemp doesn’t have a very large concentration, so to extract it, to takes a lot. So you need a lot of space.
Anthony Phillip: You can’t grow it near marijuana, because of the way pollination and different things work. You can end up messing with the genetics a little bit. And as it is, when people are growing hemp, it is possible for them to grow what they call hot, where it has too much THC in it. Even though it is CBD dominant, it can have a lot of THC. So you want to try to get it where it’s growing low, low levels of THC. Lot of open space, and then a lot of good outdoor space where you can keep it from being contaminated by other plants or other chemicals and things like that.
Big Bud: Is there anybody growing this product indoors, using grow lights or hydroponics?
Anthony Phillip: I haven’t seen that. I think some people may have some greenhouses … I wouldn’t consider those really indoor, compared to some of the marijuana grows I’ve seen, that are indoor, or hydroponic like you’re saying. Most of it, they need a lot of space, so if you look at the farms in Oregon and stuff, they’re all outdoor. Wide open, big fields, a lot of acreage to get what they need. So, it’s … I haven’t seen any really big indoor grows myself.
Big Bud: And there isn’t any way to make a genetic variant of the hemp plant, that has a higher concentration of CBD but without the THC?
Anthony Phillip: No. Some of them have almost none. It’s a trace amount. In the extraction process, they now are able to get … You basically have isolate, which is where they just extract the CBD and you get nothing else. And then you have full spectrum, where you can get everything that’s in the plant. Terpenes, different cannabinoids, sometimes a little trace amount of THC. And now they have what they call broad spectrum, which is like full spectrum, but they are able to completely extract out all the THC. So you have all the cannabinoids, all the terpenes, and no THC.
Big Bud: In the products that you supply, have you found a difference in providing or in what results, when you give people the full spectrum versus the CBD only product?
Anthony Phillip: Yeah, I think generally speaking, the full spectrum we get better feedback. You have the entourage effect, is what they call it, when all the terpenes and cannabinoids and the whole plant material is working together. You get different effects than just the single one alone. There’s some people that, for reasons of maybe drug testing and other things, they’re … Just only feel comfortable taking the isolate. But overall, I would say that the best response comes from the full spectrum. Getting the whole plant, all the different compounds in it.
Big Bud: And just to be clear, all the different compounds does not include the psychoactive compounds of which there are, I suppose, two or three [crosstalk 00:15:38]-
Anthony Phillip: If there are any, it’s such a low percentage that nobody would feel an effect or even notice it. The legal amount in this country for THC is 0.3%. Some other countries, it’s 0.2%, which is so small. Some of our full spectrum oils that we have, we do the testing on it, and there’s zero in them. Even though it’s allowable, it’s such a small amount that it’s just nonexistent.
Big Bud: Do you do the testing yourself, or is this somewhere that you have a lab you’re cooperating with?
Anthony Phillip: Yeah. We use third party labs to do that. We try to use ones with good reputation. Testing in the industry, and this is something that I don’t think people will tell you often, is you can test at 10 different labs and get 10 different results. So, we try to deal with ones that are very consistent, have all their [SOPs 00:16:33] in order … Because no matter what, you’re going to get different results, but you want to use a high profile lab with a good reputation. That’s what we try to do, so we know what’s in it and we can share it with our customers.
Big Bud: Yeah, I read something recently that a number of labs, I think it was in California, maybe it was in Michigan … had been censured or even shut down because their testing procedures were inadequate and they were just [inaudible 00:17:07] about what they were doing.
Big Bud: I suppose anytime there’s a burgeoning big business like this, there are going to be a lot of scammy operators somewhere.
Anthony Phillip: Yeah, it’s going to be that way for a while. And I don’t even think everyone has bad intentions. It’s just the wild west. So much of it is … People are just trying to get into it and get going, and they don’t always know what they’re doing. So I’ve seen that in labs that do extraction too. They’re just starting out. They’re learning everything. The equipment … There wasn’t specific equipment for doing this. There’s starting to be now, but they were having to Frankenstein their lab together with extraction equipment they were using basically for cannabis or for marijuana.
Anthony Phillip: It may have not been optimal. So, it’s all emerging and changing. The regulations will change it and it will get better and better. But there’s a lot changing, every day.
Big Bud: I do want to venture into something that I think people maybe need to be aware of. And that is, there are Chinese suppliers of CBD isolate or CBD oil, or something like that. I don’t know anything about the reputation or whether the product is reasonably tested or not. I wonder if you have any insight on that.
Anthony Phillip: Yeah. We do everything we can to keep it … And there’s going to be enough here where we can say that we source from America only. We just like that. I just like being able to source it from here. I know our standards are very high, everything is organically grown here. Even if we go to a different lab, everything is done in a good way. Canada does supply, and I’ve never heard of any problems with Canada. You have from Europe, there’s a few places. I know Austria … Different places produce it. Again, I’ve heard nothing but good things about there. We just choose to source from America.
Anthony Phillip: Chinese, it’s one of those things where … The standards that they may be using are not the same as the standards that we have here. Even though we’re emerging with regulation, the farmers and the people here … Their standards for how they process and how they farm are very different. I personally would not trust CBD products from China, just because of not knowing. If you have a big lab where you can bring it in and you can test it yourself, or third party test it for things that could be problematic in it … Pesticides, residual things from growing it, mould … and actually know what’s in it, that might be okay, but I like working with a farm that I know does that and has the same standards.
Anthony Phillip: So, China … I don’t know what you would be getting from them. That’s my only hesitation with that.
Big Bud: Right. And that’s something … I share that opinion. You just don’t know what you’re getting. Another thing that has raised some confusion among people that are looking on our site anyway is the … confluence of views about kratom versus CBD. Tell me what you know about that.
Anthony Phillip: I don’t know a whole lot. I have a friend in Texas that uses it. To me, it’s almost like … I just saw an article today that said, “Is kratom the CBD of opiates?” I really don’t know a whole lot about it. I know that CBD really exploded two or three years ago. Before it had its acceptance now, it really exploded in the smoke shop, vape shop, in that whole scene, and kratom is also very popular there.
Anthony Phillip: I know there have been stories of people who have, from as far as I can tell, been harmed by it. That makes me worry. I don’t think I would use it. I’m not an expert on it, but with CBD, it’s such a benign substance … There’s no way to overdose on It. It has very few drug interactions. It does have some. If people are taking it, we always recommend they speak with their doctor. The easiest way I can explain it is like grapefruit. There’s some medications that if people take … There’s an enzyme in grapefruit that’ll block the action. CBD kind of works the same way.
Anthony Phillip: But there’s few very things. Maybe blood thinners and a few other things. But in general … People give it to children for seizures and different things. It’s just a very natural, very … non toxic thing that you can put into your body. Kratom I don’t know much about. I just know it’s been linked to some possible deaths. I don’t know why. It may have not been it, but I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.
Big Bud: Right. Okay. Well, Anthony Philips of Pure Source Labs, it’s been a real pleasure talking to you. Hopefully this video interview was recorded like I intended it to be, and we’ll get it posted and transcribed and so forth. If it didn’t come across properly, I may have to be back with you again.
Anthony Phillip: That’s okay.
Big Bud: But it’s been a pleasure talking to you anyway. We’ll certainly post some links to your labs, and a note about how people can find the CBD products that you’re in the business with.
Anthony Phillip: Yeah.
Big Bud: I really appreciate your time, Anthony. Thank you very much.
Anthony Phillip: Thank you.
Big Bud: Bye.
Anthony Phillip: All right, bye bye.