CBD American Shaman Review – An FDA Letter, a Failed Potency Test, and the Highest Price We Have Costed

The FDA Warning Letter

Across this review series we have searched for FDA warning letters against dozens of supplement and CBD brands, and have repeatedly reported finding none. That has been a positive finding for a lot of companies. It is not one here.

“Adulterated” is a specific legal determination, not a rhetorical flourish — and it concerns the products themselves rather than a disagreement about marketing language. Many CBD warning letters over the years have addressed claims; this one addresses composition.

The breadth is notable too. This is not a single item pulled up on a technicality — it is a list spanning sweets, baked goods, three beverage lines, honey products and pet items. That is a range-wide finding, not a product-level one.

The Part About Products That Appeal to Children

One element of the letter deserves separating out, because a regulator went out of its way to raise it.

A lollipop is a deliberate format choice. Nobody arrives at a CBD sucker by accident — it is a decision about who the product looks appealing to, and the FDA singling it out is the kind of thing a buyer should weigh before ordering anything from the range.

We made the same point reviewing fruit-flavoured gummies containing a far more dangerous compound earlier in this series: a sweet is the most hazardous possible format for anything with an active ingredient, because it is the one form a child will help themselves to without being told what it is. CBD is not remotely as dangerous as that other product — but the packaging logic is identical, and here a regulator has said so.

It Failed Its Independent Potency Test

We weight independent assays above everything else a CBD company tells us about itself, because across this series they have repeatedly overturned impressions formed from marketing.

Over label rather than under is the better direction to miss in, and we should say so — you are not being short-changed on quantity. But 14% against a 10% limit is a fail, and it means the number on the bottle is not the number in the bottle.

The absence of contaminant results is the quieter problem. No microbes, solvents, pesticides or heavy metals data means the assay tells you nothing about purity — only about quantity. The brand we rated highest in this category was screened on all four and passed all four.

The Most Expensive CBD We Have Costed

We have maintained a running cost-per-milligram table across every CBD brand in this series. American Shaman goes to the top of it.

A premium price is defensible when something justifies it — audited certification, verified accuracy, an unusually good guarantee, a genuinely differentiated formulation. We could not identify what justifies this one, and the reported category norm of 5 to 15 cents puts even the bottom of American Shaman’s range at the top of everyone else’s.

The 9x Claim, and Why It Is the Wrong Shape

The company’s central marketing proposition is that its proprietary nanotechnology makes its products nine times more bioavailable than anything else on the market.

Reporting indicates the company does not provide evidence supporting this, and that independent research does not support the extent of the claim. We looked for a peer-reviewed study establishing it and did not find one.

To be fair to the underlying science: emulsification and particle-size reduction are real techniques, and improving the oral bioavailability of poorly water-soluble compounds is a legitimate and well-studied field. Our criticism is not that nanoemulsion is nonsense.

It is that a precise numerical superlative was asserted without published evidence — and that a company claiming this degree of formulation precision returned a product 14% off its own label. If the technology delivers what is claimed, the one independent measurement available does not show it.

A Second Body Asked Them to Substantiate, Too

This corroborates the section above rather than repeating it, which is why it matters.

CBD American Shaman is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and its profile carries an active alert dating from 2019 stating that the company did not comply with the BBB’s request that it substantiate marketing claims on its website regarding product efficacy and action.

BBB accreditation is voluntary and its absence proves little on its own — plenty of decent companies are not accredited, and we have said so elsewhere in this series. An active alert for failing to substantiate efficacy claims is a different matter, because it is a record of something the company was asked to do and did not.

The Franchise Dispute, in Proportion

American Shaman operates as a franchise, and there has been litigation — O’Neal v. American Shaman Franchise Systems — in which a franchisee brought claims including breach of contract, unjust enrichment, state law violations and Fair Labor Standards Act violations. It settled, with the franchisee receiving $50,000 and both sides signing a mutual release.

We are reporting this proportionately rather than dramatically. A franchise dispute is a commercial disagreement between a franchisor and a franchisee; it is not a consumer safety matter, a settlement is not an admission of liability, and $50,000 is a modest sum. If you are considering buying a franchise it is worth reading; if you are considering buying a bottle, the sections above matter far more.

What Can Be Said in Its Favour

This review has been relentlessly negative, so we should set out what genuinely counts on the other side. It is a short list, and we looked.

• Physical stores. It is a large retail franchise, so you can walk in, ask a person questions and buy without waiting for delivery. For a first-time buyer nervous about ordering a cannabinoid online, that has real value, and it is something none of the cheaper brands here offer.
• It publishes lab reports. The company maintains a public lab results page, which puts it ahead of sellers we have criticised for describing testing and publishing nothing.
• The tested product was over label, not under. Failing at 14% by containing more CBD than stated is a quality-control failure rather than a value one.
• Emulsion technology is a real field, even if the specific nine-fold figure is unevidenced.

The retail presence is the strongest of these, and for some buyers it will genuinely be worth paying something for. It is not worth paying eleven times for.

Side Effects and Who Should Not Use CBD

Speak to a clinician first if you are:

• Pregnant or breastfeeding.
• Taking prescription medication. CBD interacts with drugs metabolised via liver cytochrome P450 enzymes, including some blood thinners and anti-epileptics.
• Living with liver disease or raised liver enzymes.
• Subject to drug testing — full spectrum products contain trace THC, and no seller can guarantee a test result.

Keep any CBD product away from children, and that applies with particular force to sweets and baked goods. Commonly reported side effects include drowsiness, diarrhoea, dry mouth, reduced appetite and changes in liver enzymes. None of these products is FDA-approved to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and there is no good evidence CBD produces weight loss.

How It Compares

On every measure we apply except retail presence, the comparison runs one way — and the gap is not marginal on any of them.

Pros and Cons

Who Should Buy This

We are struggling to construct the case, and we have tried.

The one genuine argument is the shop. If you want to buy CBD today, in person, from someone you can ask questions of, and you are willing to pay a large premium for that convenience, this is a national chain that provides it. That is a real reason and we are not going to dismiss it.

For everyone else, buy elsewhere. At 14 to 23 cents per milligram you are paying several times over for a product that failed the one independent potency test we could find, returned no purity data, and comes from a company holding an FDA adulteration letter.

If you buy anyway, avoid the sweets and baked goods — they are the products the FDA named specifically, both for the adulteration finding and for child appeal. And do not pay a premium for the nine-fold claim, because we could find nothing establishing it.

And not for weight loss, which is true of every CBD product we have reviewed.

Limitations of This Review

We have not bought, used or independently tested any CBD American Shaman product.

The potency finding rests on a single product from a large range — a 300mg water-soluble oil — and one failure does not establish that the whole catalogue misses its labels. We report it because it is the independent measurement available, not because it is comprehensive. The absence of contaminant results is an absence in that report rather than evidence of contamination, and we are not suggesting otherwise.

The FDA letter is dated November 2022, and a company may reformulate or discontinue products in response — we have not established whether the named products were changed or withdrawn, and it would be unfair to assume nothing happened. Similarly the BBB alert dates from 2019. Check the current position rather than treating either as necessarily describing today.

Pricing is as reported by third-party coverage rather than read across the catalogue ourselves, and a franchise model means prices may vary by location and promotion. Our conclusion on the nine-fold claim is that we could not find supporting evidence, which is not the same as proving it false. The franchise litigation settled with no admission of liability. We publish no customer satisfaction score. None of this is medical advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Verdict

Four findings, and they point the same way.

An FDA warning letter dated 16 November 2022 determined products including CBD Suckers, Hard Candies, Cookies, three beverage lines, honey products and pet items to be adulterated for containing an unsafe food additive — a finding about composition rather than about marketing language. Across this series we have looked for FDA letters against dozens of brands and repeatedly found none; this is the exception. The agency was also “particularly concerned” about products appealing to children, naming the suckers, hard candies, cookies and gummies.

It failed its independent potency test. A product labelled 300mg measured 342.3mg — 14% variance against a 10% limit — with no microbe, solvent, pesticide or heavy metal results returned at all. Over label is the better direction to fail in, but it is still a fail, and it means the number on the bottle is not the number in it.

It is the most expensive CBD we have costed. At 14 to 23 cents per milligram against a category norm of 5 to 15, its cheapest products sit at everyone else’s most expensive. At the top end that is roughly eleven times the cheapest brand we have priced — a brand that passed at +2.36% with every contaminant screen clean.

And the claim that is meant to justify the premium is unevidenced. Nine times more bioavailable than anything else on the market is a numerical superlative against every competitor at once, and we found no published work establishing it — while the one independent measurement available showed the product 14% off its own label. A second body noticed too: the BBB records the company not complying with a 2019 request to substantiate efficacy claims.

The one genuine point in its favour is the shop. A national chain of physical stores where you can ask a person and walk out with a bottle is worth something to a nervous first-time buyer, and none of the cheaper brands offer it. It is not worth eleven times the price.

Buy from a brand that publishes verified numbers instead, and if you buy here anyway, avoid the sweets and baked goods the FDA named.