Martha Stewart, the 78-year-old entrepreneur who built a wildly successful media empire and lifestyle brand, turned her attention last year to cannabis. Stewart is now working with Canadian company Canopy Growth to develop a line of CBD products for pets.
That partnership is expected to bear fruit by September when Canopy Growth plans to launch a line of CBD products for pets designed with Stewart as a consultant. The project with Stewart is part of a wave of new products from Canopy Growth, including a host of cannabis-infused beverages such as Tweed Houndstooth & Soda and Tweed Bakerstreet & Ginger.
But the CBD for pets venture could rank among the company's biggest endeavors yet. Stewart still commands a massive audience as a household name, with about 7.3 million readers of her publication Martha Stewart Living. Her fans are 90 percent women with an average age of 55 and a median household income of $82,175. That’s a powerful demographic.
Stewart’s friendship with Snoop Dogg brought her to cannabis.
Stewart’s move into cannabis was not entirely unexpected. She has championed CBD on her website and is now friends with cannabis aficionado and businessman Snoop Dogg, who also has partnered with Canopy Growth, as have other celebrities. He owns the cannabis publication Merry Jane and also has his own line of products, Leafs by Snoop.
Stewart and Snoop work on the show “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party” for VH-1. Her co-star’s use of cannabis is legendary, but Stewart said it never bothered her. “I'm quite egalitarian and liberal when it comes to stuff like that," Stewart told the Hollywood Reporter.
It was Snoop who reportedly connected Stewart with Canopy Growth, introducing her to then-CEO Bruce Linton in 2018. The partnership has been heralded as a big win for the legal cannabis market, bringing in one of the most recognizable faces in the world and not one usually associated with cannabis.
All this is springing from Stewart’s devotion to animals.
Stewart has shifted in recent years from focusing on creating domestic bliss to focusing on programs and agencies that help pets. An image of her with two of her dogs was used when she announced the partnership with Canopy Growth.
But that’s just the tip of the animal-loving iceberg for Stewart. Her website reports she has French bulldogs Bête Noire, Crème Brûlée, and Francesca Blackbird, chow chows Emperor Han, Empress Qin, and Genghis Khan, as well as cats, dogs, chinchillas, canaries, parakeets, ponies, donkeys, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, turkeys, guinea fowl, quail, peacocks, and homing pigeons,
This just in: Martha Stewart really likes animals.
She’s also been a long-time advocate for animal wellness. Stewart advocates CBD products as a way to help pets deal with health issues without giving them pharmaceuticals.
On her website, Stewart published an article about the use of CBD products with pets, noting that CBD does not contain THC, the chemical ingredient in marijuana that gets you high. While dogs have been found to have a sensitivity to THC, the same is not true for hemp. To fall within legal guidelines in the United States, hemp must have less than 0.3 percent THC.
That’s what has made CBD oil and other products for pets so popular since the U.S. Congress made them legal nationwide in late 2018. CBD oil is especially popular for pain relief in older dogs who suffer from joint pain and arthritis. It’s also becoming more common to treat inflammation, control seizures, combat nausea, and helps to stimulate appetite.