Page 19 - BusinessWest November 23, 2020

Tim Van Epps with some of the ‘mother plants’ growing indoors at Heritage CBD’s Northampton facility.
Natural T
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Market Grows for Hemp and CBD, but So Do the Challenges
By Joseph Bednar
im Van Epps volunteers with an organization called Fairways for Freedom, which helps combat-injured vets assimilate back into society through holistic initiatives and golf,
The Cannabis Industry
BusinessWest CANNABIS INDUSTRY NOVEMBER 23, 2020 19
teaching them the game and sponsoring trips to great courses around the world.
That’s where Van Epps, president of the Sandri Compa- nies, first saw the benefits of cannabidoil, or CBD, a chemi- cal compound made from the hemp part of the cannabis plant.
“I saw veterans who were taking 30 different pills a day, and a lot of these veterans are just using CBD now, and that’s it,” he told BusinessWest. “I saw 25 guys who were doctor-prescribed drug addicts, and now they’re on CBD, and their lives have changed dramatically. I saw what this could do. I saw what it did for one of my older brother’s sons, and for folks with stage-4 cancer. I’ve watched with my own two eyes what it’s done for a lot of people who had a lot of problems.”
He’s done much more than observe, however, launch- ing a company called Heritage CBD almost three years ago with Sarah McLaughlin, a nutritionist and registered sports dietitian who had built a whole-foods company called Sun