Last year we brought you the story of Amy Miles and Kentucky Naturals LLC. Her efforts to bring hemp-derived CBD to those who need it really exemplify all the great things being generated by the Kentucky hemp industry.
Now Amy and the Kentucky Naturals team are going even further in their quest to educate CBD users on what the cannabinoid is and why it works the way it does. Starting April 15th, CBD consumers and others in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area will be able to stop by 3027 Dixie Highway in Edgewood, KY and learn about hemp and CBD at the Kentucky Naturals – Hemp Extract and CBD Learning Center.
We got the chance to speak with Amy again about her new venture and she stressed the need for showing people what lies beyond the hype and press about CBD. “I believe that if hemp extracts/cannabinoids are ever going to be widely accepted or mainstream, we need to educate as many people as we can about what cannabinoids are and are not and the truths about what they can and cannot do,” Amy told The Marijuana Times. “In order to do that, I thought Kentucky Naturals needed to start locally and build out because Facebook and other social media outlets still do not allow advertising of CBD products. That means Kentucky Naturals can have a company page, but we cannot boost our posts or place advertisements.”
Thwarted by new avenues of educating people, Amy and her team have turned to an older, more traditional way of reaching the masses: a brick and mortar location. “When I made the decision for Kentucky Naturals to open a store in which to sell our CoreAlign tinctures, I wanted a location which had enough room for education, meetings and events,” Amy said. “We plan to host meetings with police & fire departments, doctors, nurses, palliative & hospice care doctors/nurses, support groups for autism & ADHD, support groups for families caring for people who are neurologically impaired, pain management specialists plus guest speakers who specialize in hemp and cannabinoids. But even more important is an area where we can log onto a computer with our customers to locate peer reviewed information about cannabinoids and help them determine if our products might help them and which one is best for their specific concerns and answer questions. You can’t find that when you purchase hemp oil at the gas station or from Amazon.”
Now in her mid-50s, Amy told us that although she might have otherwise been contemplating retirement, instead she is launching a new business. “It has been very difficult reaching this point and we still have a long way to go,” Amy told us. “There is a lot of money coming into this industry from investors who hope to make a lot of money from afar. It is becoming a difficult industry to navigate and finding people with whom you can trust to do business is getting more difficult. I’ve recently noticed there are a lot of my peers, especially women, selling CBD oils like I used to sell Avon. Sadly, most never give a thought about the work that went into that bottle of tincture or cream or truly understand cannabinoids. Worse perhaps is that they probably don’t care as long as they get their commission check. Those people will never know what it is really like to start to work early in the morning with their hands in bags of hemp or dark, sticky crude hemp oil and finish late at night cleaning their hands with isopropyl alcohol because nothing else will get the oil off. Behind all the glamorous hype now seen on TV and elsewhere are hardworking farmers and people like me hoping that this will be their one big thing.”
Even after all the hard work, many roadblocks remain. Simple things like finding a credit card processor can be almost impossible for companies in the hemp space. “Last month at the KYHIA conference in Bowling Green, I finally found a legitimate US based credit card processor, was approved and set up with card processing equipment only to be told this week that they have changed their minds and will not be processing CBD products,” Amy said. “There are no promises in this industry for tomorrow. Everyone who enters it is taking a risk.”
Amy said she wants to do much more than provide CBD products. She wants to teach people about hemp growing and extraction, the differences in hemp seed oils, the testing their CBD products undergo and more.
After two months of renovations, Amy and her family have created “a warm and inviting environment for the community to come and engage with us.” There will be a children’s play area, art and wood crafts provided by Amy’s cousin and CBD products from multiple companies and brands.
If you live in the Northern Kentucky area, I can guarantee you that you will not find another establishment like this one in the area. If you want to know more about CBD and find the Internet a consuming morass of conflicting – and often incorrect – information, stop by Kentucky Naturals – Hemp Extracts and CBD Learning Center if you’re in the neighborhood.
