: Is cannabidiol (CBD) really an oil? Many people talk about CBD oil for medical treatment. I bought some at a dispensary and the label says ingredients: 100% cannabidiol. But is it really an oil? Since the word ends with

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Oil is:

any nonpolar chemical substance that is a viscous liquid at ambient temperatures and is both hydrophobic (does not mix with water, literally "water fearing") and lipophilic (mixes with other oils, literally "fat loving").

Cannabidiol has high lipophilicity (Fasinu et al., 2016; Ohlsson et al., 1986) and is extremely hydrophobic (Stinchcomb et al. 2004), therefore it is an oil.

But:

The term "water-soluble CBD" has lately been extensively used throughout the medical cannabis industry. "Water-soluble" means able to homogeneously incorporate into water by separating into molecules or ions (dissolve like sugar, alcohol or salt). Oily substances, however, are repelled by water, which forces them to stay separate from it.

CBD, THC and many other oils can, however, be made water compatible if they are formulated as micro- or nanoemulsions, which are stable and visually homogeneous oil/water mixtures. (Source)

See the NCBI on medical uses of nanoemulsions as an advanced mode of drug delivery system (Jaiswal et al. 2015) and the Wikipedia article on microemulsions for more information.

References

Fasinu, P.S., et al. (2016) Current Status and Prospects for Cannabidiol Preparations as
New Therapeutic Agents. Pharmacotherapy, 36(7): p. 781-96. doi: 10.1002/phar.1780 Free PDF: www.alchimiaweb.com/blogfr/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Current-Status-and-Prospects-for-Cannabidiol-Preparations.pdf
Jaiswal, M., Dudhe, R., & Sharma, P. K. (2015). Nanoemulsion: an advanced mode of drug delivery system. 3 Biotech, 5(2), 123–127. doi: 10.1007/s13205-014-0214-0

Ohlsson, A., et al. (1986) Single-dose kinetics of deuterium-labelled cannabidiol in man
after smoking and intravenous administration. Biological Mass Spectrometry,
13(2): p. 77-83. doi: 10.1002/bms.1200130206

Stinchcomb, A. L., Valiveti, S., Hammell, D. C., & Ramsey, D. R. (2004). Human skin permeation of ?8?tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol and cannabinol. Journal of pharmacy and pharmacology, 56(3), 291-297. doi: 10.1211/0022357022791