Genco Pura Review

Written by Tyler Swell — Edited by Cathy Rozyczko on February 9, 2021

Genco Pura was founded by two special operations veterans with a passion for the natural benefits of CBD. Needless to say, their heart and minds seem to be in the right place. Or are they? We were surprised to find no charitable affiliations with the brand whatsoever nor a veterans discount (something we expected to see). The brand may have good intentions, but they’ll need to explain their processes in more detail and conduct more lab tests to ease our minds.

Justin Blehar and Phil Braun have over 25 years experience in special ops between them. They saw the benefits of CBD firsthand and wanted to offer cannabidiol products to potentially help individuals suffering from PTSD and those who want to improve their health and wellness without the psychoactivity brought on by THC. The two founded Genco Pura in 2017, and the rest is history.

Genco Pura claims to be leaders in the space, providing private-label services and popular wholesale in addition to their online retail store. The company is headquartered in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina with another West Coast Office in California. Their CBD product line is relatively basic — just seven options — and is moderately priced.

Before we get into the product catalog, it must be said that we are unsure if Genco Pura is using CBD isolate, since they never specify. They sell products that are ‘THC-free’ and ‘<0.03% THC,’ which in most cases would lead us to assume a brand is using isolate and full spectrum CBD oil. Here it’s not so cut and dry.

The THC-free product descriptions state they may contain other cannabinoids, but the softgels do not according to a posted cannabinoid profile. This disclaimer leads us to believe that Genco Pura further removes THC perhaps with HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography), but we’re really not sure. When it comes to CBD oil, we want to know at least the basics of the processes employed by vendors. When we don’t, we’re wary.

Thus, we step cautiously into the catalog from Genco Pura. They source from organic farms in Colorado but do not disclose their extraction method. Plus, the company provides just two cannabinoid profiles and zero contaminants test results for the following:

• THC-Free, water-soluble CBD softgels at $65 – We found some confusion here too. In the product description, it says a serving is two softgels for a total of 10 mg phytocannabinoids. But underneath, it says the serving size is one softgel at 10 mg. If we go by the package labelling, it should be 10 mg per softgel. Surprise, surprise, we checked the CoA for this one, and it looks like there is actually only 8.8 mg of cannabidiol in each softgel. Geez.
• <0.03% THC water-soluble CBD softgels at $75
• CBD Pet Tinctures at $60
• CBD Pet Chews at $45
• CBD Vegan Gummies at $45
• THC-Free CBD Tinctures from $60-$100
• <0.03% THC tinctures from $60-$100

The bright spot in the catalog are the CBD gummies, since they are totally vegan and contain no artificial colors or flavors. But overall, we’re a bit underwhelmed and honestly surprised that this brand founded by veterans offers no military discounts.

Bottom Line – Genco Pura will need to disclose their extraction method as well as more about the processes (do they use isolate or not?) behind their CBD line for us to get on board.