On Reddit, a simple question often shows up:“What’s your reason for using CBD?”
The answers are surprisingly consistent:
“I only sleep when I use it.”
“It’s the only thing that touches my pain.”
“It just takes the edge off my anxiety.”
If you work in the CBD space, you’ve probably heard the same lines from customers, distributors, or even your own team. The question in 2025, however, isn’t “Is CBD just a fad?” anymore. It’s:“In a fast-growing multi-billion dollar market, who actually captures the value — brands, formulators, or hardware suppliers?”
To answer that, we need to zoom out: look at the real market size, why consumers use CBD, how formats are evolving, what’s happening in U.S. regulation, and what this all means for hardware and B2B buyers.
How Big Is CBD, Really?
Depending on which analyst you ask, you will get slightly different numbers — but they all point in the same direction: CBD is no longer a niche supplement.
Some major research firms estimate the global CBD market at only a few billion dollars in 2023, growing into the tens of billions by the early 2030s. Others, using broader definitions that include more segments of consumer health and hemp-based products, see a path to well over USD 100 billion in the same time frame. The exact number depends on how you draw the borders of “CBD market,” but the message is the same:CBD is a long game. Whether the market is “only” 40 billion or over 100 billion by the early 2030s, it is not going back to being a fringe category.
That kind of trajectory doesn’t just reward whoever launches the cutest gummy. It rewards whoever builds robust, compliant, operationally efficient product lines — including the right delivery formats and hardware.
Why Do People Actually Use CBD?
If you strip away the hype and marketing language, CBD usage is remarkably concentrated around a few practical needs.
Surveys of U.S. consumers consistently find that most people use CBD to reduce stress and relax, followed closely by pain relief and sleep support. In more detailed breakdowns, pain relief is steadily one of the top reasons across age groups, with stress, anxiety, and insomnia clustered close behind.
Reddit threads like “What’s your reason for using CBD/THC?” read almost like qualitative annotations on these statistics: people talk about chronic pain, racing thoughts at night, work stress, and social anxiety far more than they talk about “wellness” in an abstract sense.
For brands and hardware suppliers, that matters. It means the durable demand drivers for CBD are anchored in four words:Stress – Pain – Sleep – Anxiety
Any conversation about formats, formulations, and devices needs to stay tied back to those use cases.
Product & Category Trends: From Oils to Gummies, Pets and Vapes
Instead of a long paragraph, here’s this part as a chart:
| Question / Trend Americans Ask | What’s Happening in the Market | What It Means for Brands & Hardware |
|---|---|---|
| “Why is everything gummies now?” | Gummies have become the default entry format – easy to dose, easy to brand, candy-like experience. | Great for branding but very crowded; differentiation relies on function (sleep, focus, calm) and quality. |
| “Are oils and tinctures still relevant?” | Oils/tinctures remain important for higher-dose or “serious” users who care about control and flexibility. | Needs strong education and trust; good for precise dosing, not as “fun” as gummies. |
| “What’s the deal with CBN, CBG, THCV?” | New cannabinoids (CBN for sleep, CBG for focus, THCV, etc.) enable function-forward formulas. | Formulation becomes more complex; hardware must deliver consistent, repeatable hits to match the promised effect. |
| “Is microdosing really a thing?” | Microdosed CBD (and sometimes THC for adults) appears in gummies, drinks and some vapes for a gentle, everyday effect. | Precision and consistency matter; hardware variability can destroy the microdose concept and user trust. |
| “Are vapes dying or evolving?” | Vapes & pre-rolls still matter for fast onset, especially around pain spikes and acute stress. | Hardware quality is now part of the perceived “therapeutic value”: leaks, burnt hits and oxidation are no longer tolerated. |
| “Why do some brands talk a lot about hardware?” | Expectations for leak-proof, stable, ergonomic devices keep rising; poor carts = returns & bad reviews. | Engineered platforms like Franctank’s vial-tank (YP07/YP08/YP09) isolate the oil until activation, boosting stability and reducing leaks. |
| “What about pets and health products?” | CBD is expanding into consumer health & pet segments, which are forecast to grow strongly into the 2030s. | Requires stricter quality control, clear dosing and gentler formats (oils, chews, topicals) — hardware thinking still matters for safety & stability. |
Policy & Compliance: The Coming Hemp / THC Shake-up in the U.S.
While product innovation has accelerated, the regulatory environment is closing in on the “wild west” era that followed the 2018 Farm Bill.
That bill famously legalized hemp at the federal level, defining it as cannabis with less than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight. It did not anticipate a wave of intoxicating products built on delta-8, delta-10, THCA and other hemp-derived cannabinoids. This loophole allowed a huge market for “hemp but it gets you high” products — drinks, gummies, vapes — to explode, often in convenience stores and gas stations with minimal age checks.
In response, new federal rules have started to tighten the system. Drafted changes aim to:
-
Maintain the 0.3% THC limit on a dry-weight basis
-
Exclude synthetic or “unnatural” cannabinoids (like many chemically converted delta-8 products) from the legal hemp definition
-
Introduce a very low cap on total THC per finished container, which would effectively wipe out most intoxicating hemp-derived beverages and many hemp “THC” gummies and vapes
For CBD brands, this means the era of easy “hemp loophole” products is ending. Products built around a hint of THC for marketing purposes may need to be reformulated toward genuinely non-intoxicating profiles. Labels, COAs, and supply chains will all be under greater scrutiny.
And hardware is part of this conversation. As THC caps tighten and enforcement increases, regulators and retailers care not only about what’s in the oil or gummy, but how it’s packaged and delivered: child-resistant, tamper-evident, leak-proof devices become part of risk management, not just packaging design.
What This Means for CBD Hardware & B2B Buyers
For B2B buyers — the people ordering hardware, negotiating with OEMs, and signing off on product roadmaps — the new landscape changes how you evaluate both suppliers and SKUs.
First, volume is up, but margins are under pressure. Market size is growing, yet so are competition and compliance costs. That makes total cost of ownership (TCO) more important than headline unit price. A cheap cartridge that leaks 5–10% of the time, or oxidizes oil in warm storage, is more expensive once you factor in returns, replacements, rework, and reputational damage.
Second, function-specific products demand reliable delivery. If your lineup includes “sleep pens,” “focus pens,” or micro-dosed CBD + CBN vapes for adult consumers, you are making a controlled-effect promise. That promise is only as good as the stability of your oil and the consistency of your hardware. Designs that protect the oil from oxygen and excessive heat and that keep leakage near zero become a strategic asset, not just a nice engineering story. Vial-tank systems like Franctank’s YP07 / YP08 / YP09 tackle this by isolating the oil in a tiny glass vial away from the heater and ambient air until activation, which helps maintain flavor and potency over the product’s shelf-life.
Third, compliance and quality will become sales tools. As federal and state rules harden, retailers and distributors will ask tougher questions: can you document exactly what’s in the product and in what amount? Is your hardware child-resistant and tamper-evident? Can your device survive shipping across climates without leaking or degrading? Brands that can answer “yes” and back it up with data gain an edge. Hardware partners who design for this move from “vendor” to “strategic partner.”
From Hype to Discipline
The CBD industry has moved past the phase where everyone launches gummies and waits to see who survives. We’re entering a different stage: one defined by data, regulation, and engineering discipline.
Data matters because investors and buyers now expect real market sizes, growth rates, and consumer use-case statistics, not just anecdotes. Regulation matters because federal and state governments are actively reshaping what counts as legal hemp and how much THC can be present, with real consequences for product lines. Engineering matters because leak-proof, stable, compliant devices and packaging are now part of how brands protect their margins and reputations.
For CBD and hemp brands, the question over the next 3–5 years isn’t just “What new cannabinoid can we launch?” It’s:“Are we building a stable, compliant product architecture — from formulation to hardware — that can survive tighter rules and tougher competition?”
If your role is purchasing, product, or hardware sourcing, that’s where you can add real strategic value: by choosing partners, devices, and designs that support not only today’s launches, but the regulatory and market realities of the 2030s.