After CBD, What’s Next? CBG and THCV Are Making Their Case as Hemp’s New Growth Engines

For the better part of a decade, CBD was the hemp industry’s entire personality. It was on gas station shelves, in pet food, in face serums, and briefly, apparently, in everything. Then came the regulatory headache, the market saturation, the margin compression — and the slow realization that betting the whole farm on a single molecule was a fragile strategy.

Now two lesser-known hemp-derived cannabinoids — CBG and THCV — are putting in serious bids to become the next thing worth paying attention to. The question isn’t whether there’s consumer interest. The question is whether the hemp industry can build around these compounds without repeating the mistakes that turned CBD from gold rush to grinding consolidation.

CBG’s Quiet Rise in Topicals

CBG, or cannabigerol, has been around as long as the rest of the cannabinoid family. It just wasn’t commercially abundant until selective breeding and improved extraction methods made it economically viable to isolate at scale. For years it was expensive to produce and mostly of interest to formulators who wanted a broader-spectrum cannabinoid profile without relying entirely on CBD.

That’s changing. CBG topicals — creams, balms, recovery blends — are increasingly cited as one of hemp’s fastest-growing product categories. The pitch to consumers is differentiated enough to cut through the noise: CBG behaves differently in the body than CBD, interacts with different receptor pathways, and brings a distinct profile that recovery-focused and wellness-oriented buyers find compelling.

The topical angle matters strategically, too. Topicals have always operated in a slightly different regulatory posture than ingestible CBD products. The FDA’s long-running standoff over CBD as a dietary supplement has left ingestible hemp products in a gray zone that’s frustrated brands and buyers alike. Topicals don’t carry the same ingestion-related regulatory triggers, which gives CBG topicals a cleaner commercial runway — at least for now.

Retailers who have been hedging on restocking ingestible CBD lines after years of inconsistent federal signals are finding topical hemp products a more defensible category to stock. CBG fits that bill without requiring anyone to wait for regulatory clarity that has, frankly, not been forthcoming.

THCV: The Functional Cannabinoid Play

THCV is a different proposition and, in some ways, a bolder one. Tetrahydrocannabivarin is structurally related to THC — and therein lies both its appeal and its regulatory complexity. THCV occurs naturally in cannabis and hemp, typically in very small quantities, but it behaves differently than delta-9 THC at standard doses. Consumers and researchers have shown interest in its potential functional effects, including appetite suppression and what some describe as a cleaner, more focused experience.

That consumer pitch — functional, clear-headed, distinct from the standard THC high — positions THCV squarely in the emerging class of “purposeful” hemp products. These are products that consumers are increasingly searching for not because they want to get high, but because they’re looking for something that does a specific job: stress, focus, sleep, recovery, appetite management.

THCV is having a moment, and the timing is not accidental. It comes as the broader hemp-derived THC market — delta-8, delta-10, HHC, THCA — faces a patchwork of state bans, enforcement actions, and legislative threats that have rattled the industry. THCV occupies a slightly different niche: it’s not being marketed primarily as a high-potency intoxicant, which means it sidesteps at least some of the enforcement scrutiny that has chased delta-8 and THCA products out of various state markets.

That’s not to say THCV is exempt from future regulatory attention. Any cannabinoid with structural similarity to THC will eventually draw scrutiny from the DEA or FDA, and several state legislatures that moved to restrict delta-8 wrote their bills broadly enough to capture novel cannabinoids in the same net. THCV brands are betting that their functional positioning buys them some runway before that happens.

What This Means for the Hemp Industry

The CBG-and-THCV moment is best understood not as two discrete product trends but as a single structural shift: hemp brands are actively diversifying their cannabinoid portfolios because the industry has learned, the hard way, that any single-molecule strategy is a liability.

When delta-8 was king, manufacturers poured investment into synthetic conversion processes and supply chains built around that one compound. Then states started banning it — Arkansas, Colorado, and others — and the DEA issued guidance that created federal uncertainty, and suddenly those supply chains were stranded assets. The companies that had built broader cannabinoid repertoires fared better.

CBG and THCV represent a conscious effort by hemp brands to build products with distinct consumer value propositions that aren’t entirely dependent on intoxication effects, and that don’t carry the same regulatory baggage as the synthetic conversion cannabinoids that attracted regulatory fire.

There’s also a consumer sophistication angle here. The hemp market’s customer base has aged and educated itself. The buyer who first tried CBD in 2019 has spent years reading about cannabinoids, experimenting with products, and developing preferences. That customer is genuinely interested in what CBG does differently than CBD, and genuinely curious about whether THCV delivers on its functional reputation. That’s a better foundation for building brand loyalty than “this gummy is technically legal in most states.”

The Farm Bill Overhang

None of this unfolds in a policy vacuum. The hemp industry is still operating under the regulatory framework established by the 2018 Farm Bill, which the 2023 reauthorization process left unresolved in critical respects. The 0.3% delta-9 THC threshold that defines legal hemp remains the baseline, but congressional debate has repeatedly circled back to whether hemp-derived intoxicating products should face additional restrictions regardless of their delta-9 content.

CBG and THCV are not meaningfully intoxicating at the doses found in commercial products — which is precisely why they present a more stable regulatory target than THCA flower or high-dose delta-8 gummies. If Congress eventually draws a harder line around intoxicating hemp products, CBG and THCV are positioned to stay on the right side of it. That regulatory optionality is itself a strategic asset.

The hemp industry spent its first decade proving it could build consumer demand. Its second decade may come down to proving it can build that demand around products with genuine differentiation, cleaner regulatory profiles, and value propositions that hold up outside the gray zone. CBG topicals and THCV products aren’t a revolution. But they’re a coherent answer to the question the whole industry has been circling: what comes after CBD?

Morgan Ellis covers hemp-derived THC, rare cannabinoids, and federal hemp policy for CannabisInquirer.com.