One area of activity in which public interest has increased exponentially over recent years is alternative medicine. Increasing awareness of natural remedies for a whole spectrum of ailments combined with a healthy cynicism towards the pharmaceutical industry and its often questionable activities and priorities has led many to distrust conventional wisdom and to seek their own relief from natural sources. Quite often this has involved a return to remedies used over centuries after having been discovered through trial and error, but subsequently rejected or at least sidelined by medical science.

Needless to say this trend has opened up a whole world of opportunity for new business, tapping into the potential created by the extraordinary growth of the natural market. The National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health has shown that 38 percent of adults in the USA and 12 percent of children are already using some form of complimentary medicine. PR Newswire has estimated that the global alternative medicine market size will have increased to nearly $200 billion by 2025.

The Controversy Surrounding CBD and Cannaboids

One area in which there has been perhaps more controversy than most has been that of medicinal cannaboids, where interest in natural products has at times found itself operating on the fringes of the law as relating to the use of prohibited drugs. Companies such as Tale of Two Strains have taken care to remain on the right side of legality whilst promoting their products in a responsible way, often mindful of the fact that significantly different rules apply in different states.

As some jurisdictions tend towards a more enlightened approached to the medicinal and even recreational use of certain soft drugs this market is likely to increase progressively in size.

Do Scientific Concerns Reflect Public Interest or Self Interest?

In the meantime less controversial providers of alternative medicines continue to find themselves the subject of criticism from the pharmaceutical industry, which holds that much of what is claimed about their properties is untested or unproven. For their part supporters of the growing natural industry retort that such criticism is usually driven solely by financial self-interest.

From the perspective of the start-up business the rapid growth in interest in herbal remedies opens up a whole new world of opportunity. The public appetite for discovering natural solutions to everything from cancer and diabetes to nail fungus and hair loss creates an almost insatiable market for manufacture or supply.

As well as discovering new remedies, there also remains much scope within the market for driving economies. Alternative medicines remain prohibitively expensive for many and increased competition in the field must inevitably start to drive down prices which in turn will open up the market to new customers. In this way there is scope for a new business to become competitive in the supply of existing solutions as well as in hitherto undiscovered ones.

Whichever way it is looked at, the relatively recent widespread interest in herbal medicine has created huge opportunities for new entrepreneurs.