Multitrance Cannabis Gummies, 100g

Where the CBD claim comes from, and it is not the manufacturer

Multitrance has produced cannabis-branded food in Amsterdam since 1995. It calls this product Cannabis Gummies, and on its own website it subtitles it Taste of Amsterdam. It does not call it CBD, anywhere.

Follow the product down the supply chain and the words change. Our own distributor lists it under a web address ending rich-in-cbd, and the main photograph it supplies is a file named Rich in CBD Gummies. One UK shop titles it Multitrance CBD Cannabis Gummies. Another titles it Cannabis Gummies, Rich in CBD. A Greek shop calls it CBD Hempy Gummies.

Not one of them publishes a milligram figure to stand behind any of it, because there is not one to publish.

We are part of that chain, so this is a correction of our own suppliers rather than a swipe at rivals. Our catalogue also generates a summary calling this a CBD-isolate CBD sweet, which is wrong for the same reason. We are fixing it, and in the meantime the page you are reading is the accurate version.

The manufacturer knows exactly how to say it when there is CBD

This is the part that settles the question, and it takes one look at the brand's own gummy shelf.

It lists eleven gummy products. Nine of them are gummy bears, and every single one has 300mg CBD in its title. The remaining two are the Cannabis Gummies, and neither carries a figure.

So the convention is deliberate and consistent: when a Multitrance sweet contains CBD, the milligrams go in the name. The absence of a number here is not an oversight, it is the brand telling you what is in the bag.

The same nine gummy bears appear under three different brand names, all made in the same place, which is a separate matter set out on the page for the Multitrance gummy bears rather than repeated here.

The label in full, including three things nobody else prints

Multitrance publishes a photograph of the back of the bag, in eight languages. Here is the English panel in plain terms.

Ingredients: sugar, glucose syrup, gelatin as the gelling agent, modified starch, citric acid as an acidifier, sorbitol as a stabiliser, hemp seed oil, flavours, and the colourants E100, E102, E131, E132 and E133.

Three details on that label are published by nobody else selling this product, and all three matter. It carries the statutory warning that E102 may adversely affect children's activity or attention, which is required wording for that colour and is covered in more depth on our page for the Multitrance gummy bears. It tells you to store the bag below twenty-two degrees. And it contains gelatin, so these are not vegetarian, which sets them apart from every CBD gummy in the comparison further down.

Two things our own distributor gets wrong, which is worth saying out loud. Its description says the bag contains essential cannabis oil. The label says hemp seed oil, and those are different materials: one is a pressed seed oil, the other implies an aromatic extract. Its colourant list also includes black carrot, which is not on the panel at all.

The nutrition figures below are printed on the bag and, as far as we can find, published nowhere else on the internet.

Hemp seed oil and CBD are not the same ingredient

Neither of the two largest CBD gummy pages in the country explains this, so it is worth doing properly.

Hemp seed oil is pressed from the seeds of the plant, in the same way rapeseed oil is pressed from rapeseed. It is a food ingredient, sold in supermarkets, and it carries no meaningful cannabidiol because cannabidiol is concentrated in the flower and leaf rather than the seed.

CBD extract is made from that flower and leaf, and a product containing it will tell you how much in milligrams, because the milligrams are the entire point of buying it.

So a sweet made with hemp seed oil and a sweet made with CBD extract can look identical on a shelf, share the same leaf artwork and sit in the same aisle, while being two completely different purchases. The test is simple and it never fails: look for a milligram figure. If there is not one, there is no cannabinoid to speak of.

On the law, briefly, because it comes up. The consumer rule in the United Kingdom is a maximum of 1mg of controlled cannabinoids per container, which is a test about THC rather than a percentage of anything. It is not the binding question for a hemp seed oil sweet, but it is the correct test and most pages in this category state it wrongly. One of the pages we checked, Orange County, states it correctly, and credit where it is due.

What they taste like

Ordinary fruit gummies, fairly sweet, with 52g of sugar in the 100g bag. The texture is a firm gelatin chew rather than a soft American-style gummy.

The hemp seed oil is present in small enough quantity that it reads as a faint background nuttiness rather than a flavour in its own right. There is no herbal or grassy note, no bitterness, and nothing that tastes of cannabis, because there is no extract in them to taste.

The colouring list gives away the look: E100 is turmeric yellow, E131 and E132 are blues, E133 is a brighter blue. These are vivid sweets rather than pale natural-looking ones.

Honestly assessed, this is a novelty bag of sweets in cannabis packaging, and a perfectly decent one. The disappointment only comes from expecting it to be something else.

If you wanted CBD gummies, here is what a real one publishes

The column that matters is the middle one. Every product here except the two cannabis-branded ones tells you how much CBD is in a single sweet.

The last row is included deliberately. Euphoria sells a cannabis gummy in the same position as this one, no figure and no cannabinoid, so if you are comparing novelty bags rather than CBD products, that is the honest alternative.

Who this is not for

Anyone who wants CBD. There is none in the bag. This is the whole reason the correction sits at the top of this page instead of the bottom, and if a listing elsewhere told you otherwise, the label disagrees with it.

Anyone vegetarian or vegan. Gelatin, stated plainly on the panel. Several of the CBD gummies in the table above are vegan and this is not.

Anyone avoiding synthetic colours, or buying for a child. The bag carries the statutory E102 warning about children's activity and attention, and it is printed on the label rather than hidden. These are 18+ regardless.

Anyone watching sugar. Fifty-two grams of it in a hundred gram bag, which the nutrition panel above states and no retailer repeats.

And anyone who needs a warm cupboard. The label says keep them below twenty-two degrees, which in a British summer is not a given.