Walgreens has announced it will sell CBD products at nearly 1,500 of its stores in select states, including Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont, South Carolina, Illinois and Indiana.
“This product offering is in line with our efforts to provide a wider range of accessible health and well-being products and services to best meet the needs and preferences of our customers,” Walgreens spokesman Brian Faith told CNBC.
The news comes after CVS recently revealed it will start selling products from Curaleaf (CURLF) at 800 stores in 10 states.
Nearly 7 percent of Americans say they use CBD products, and according to an analysis by Cowen & Co. released last month, the market could reach $16 billion by the year 2025.
In fact, 6.9 percent of people who said they used CBD was higher than the 4.2 percent who used e-cigarettes. Also, 19.6 percent of people considered themselves current tobacco users. It was the CBD usage, however, that most surprised the analyst.
The biggest demographic using the substance, according to the survey, are people between the ages of 18 and 34. The majority of the usage comes from tinctures, at 44 percent, followed by topical products at 26 percent and capsules at 22 percent. Beverages account for 19 percent of use.
With its popularity growing, retailers are looking to cash in. In January, Green Growth Brands announced it has entered an agreement with shoe retailer DSW to sell hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) personal care products at select stores throughout the U.S. And high-end retailer Neiman Marcus has introduced of a slew of health and beauty products, such as lip glosses, hair serums and foot creams.
“Cannabis beauty brands are becoming increasingly popular, and CBD products are the next big thing in beauty,” Kim D’Angelo, Neiman Marcus’ beauty buyer, said last month. “Our CBD assortment is an important part of our brand’s commitment to the health and well-being of our customers.”
Evolve Bank & Trust said Tuesday (March 4) that it is set to return some funds to end users impacted by the Synapse bankruptcy but does not yet have the information it needs to return additional funds.
The bank is working with Ankura to analyze data and confirm institution-to-institution cash management transactions involving end users’ funds held at Evolve, the bank said in a Tuesday update.
“As a result, Evolve will be disbursing more funds to a subset of End Users on or about March 6, 2025, via PayPal and checks sent via the U.S. Postal Service,” the bank said in the update.
To continue identifying and returning funds to the appropriate end users, Evolve needs to receive more transactional data from other Synapse ecosystem banks and to examine that data, according to the update.
“If and when we receive the necessary data from the Synapse ecosystem banks, we expect the comprehensive, ecosystem-wide reconciliation will determine which banks hold End Users’ funds, how much each bank holds, and what still needs to be disbursed to End Users,” Evolve said in the update.
Before Synapse’s bankruptcy, Synapse connected other FinTech firms with banks, helping those startups store their customers’ money, PYMNTS reported in February.
At its peak, Synapse was managing billions of dollars, and when it collapsed in April, thousands of people were locked out of their accounts.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) cited the Synapse situation in September when proposing a rule that would strengthen recordkeeping for bank deposits received from third party, non-bank companies that accept those deposits on behalf of consumers and businesses, PYMNTS reported at the time.
Currently, when non-bank companies deposit their customers’ funds in a bank, they do so in a single custodial account that may hold funds of thousands of consumers and businesses — and the bank may not know the individual owners of funds in the custodial account.
Evolve said in its Tuesday update that it is working with the other Synapse ecosystem banks to get the transaction data it needs to determine where end users’ funds are being held, because the Synapse ledger is unreliable.
“While the process for reconciling and recovering from the Synapse bankruptcy is taking longer than expected, we remain optimistic that with cooperation from the Synapse ecosystem banks, End Users funds can be located and returned to their rightful owners,” the bank said.