This story is part of The Assembly’s investigation into North Carolina hemp. Learn more here.
Q. Nicole Vanderhorst first took an interest in CBD in 2015, after her father died. She was looking for a plant-based alternative to her therapist’s recommended treatments for grief and anxiety, and she’d read about veterans using CBD tinctures to help with post-traumatic stress disorder. She was living in Maryland, which at the time meant she needed to obtain a license to purchase CBD from a dispensary.
Vanderhorst relocated to Charlotte four years later, bought a 5-acre farm, and began growing hemp. By opening WH Farms, Vanderhorst wanted to “amplify access to this plant medicine throughout consumer goods.” The business now cultivates industrial hemp and makes CBD beauty and wellness products.
The Assembly talked to Vanderhorst about what changing laws could mean for her farm.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Assembly: What did you think about the hemp market when you moved here?
Vanderhorst: There’s a lot of stigma being in the Bible Belt. There’s a lot of misinformation. It’s a very rich Christian-value culture, and so a lot of people can be very misinformed about the variations of the plant and a little frightful about increasing access to the plant.
Have you had issues with law enforcement or regulatory agencies?
We’ve had to burn acres of flower that ran hot. We also have had to deal with banking discharges—one bank said that the FDA said that CBD gummies were illegal, and the FDA didn’t say that. You’re dealing with people behind these institutions, and the person behind the decision was so unaware that they made a decision to ask us to liquidate our account and move our funds to another bank.
How will the pending federal ban on hemp-derived intoxicants affect your business?
It affects the customers more than it affects us because it limits our ability to really bring the full-spectrum product to the marketplace. Again, I think that the misinformation about the plant highlights an emphasis on THC, but it also eliminates the ability to grow a full-body plant that offers so many other cannabinoids and delivers it in a way that is best preferred by nature.
It limits the THC level that’s available in a CBD product. And there’s scientific research that shows the entourage effect—that the combo of CBD and THC has certain therapeutic benefits together—that we won’t be able to deliver. So again, the customers really are the ones who truly suffer because they’re not able to get the full benefit of the plant.
