New medical hemp product arrives on the market. Local restaurant owner is one of its backers
With a $2.5 million commitment to university research in 2016, Ed Chiles, founder of the Chiles Restaurant Group, and his business partner, Ted LaRoche, launched what would become GreenWay Herbal Products.
This month, the company announced that it has brought one of its first products, Tanasi CBD, to market. Tanasi, made from the hemp varietal of cannabis sativa, is sold as a salve or lotion, tincture, or capsule to target inflammation.
Tansai is produced based on a patent-pending CBDA/CBD formula developed by Middle Tennessee State University. The product is a non-psychoactive, whole-hemp extract, containing the legal threshold of 0.3 percent of THC or less, said GreenWay CEO Jeff Heeren in a phone interview Wednesday.
For his part, Chiles says he believes in the effectiveness of hemp products to bring relief to those suffering from pain.
“The opportunity to be a part of a university-based science project on hemp in 2016 was something that I had to be a part of,” Chiles said of his decision to enter the CBD arena. “The results of these ongoing studies have proven to me that hemp is an amazing supplement that supports our endocannabinoid system. I take our Tanasi products every day because they are rooted in science and I know I can trust the research.
“Hemp is something we really need to be looking at. It’s time we got the shackles off it and let scientists study it. It’s been proven effective in treating epilepsy, inflammation, PTSD and anxiety. People are getting real benefit from it. This stuff helps people,” Chiles said.
Essentially, CBD is short for cannabidiol, a chemical compound derived from the cannabis plant. CBDA is cannabidiolic acid, that becomes a CBD when heated.
“The combination of CBDA/CBD is the basis, and difference maker, of our Tanasi product line. Two compounds work better than one, and we believe our products work better than CBD alone,” Heeren said, referring to the proliferation of CBD products already on the market.
Researchers at Middle Tennessee State University identified strong anti-inflammatory and immuno-suppressive abilities of hemp extracts and CBD extracts isolated from the hemp samples, Heeren said.
People are desperate for information on products they can trust that have medical science behind them, Chiles said.
To that end, Chiles and LaRoche committed to a 10-year grant program at $250,000 a year for research with Middle Tennessee State University.
CBD and medical marijuana can also be one of the answers to the opiod crisis, Chiles said.
Hemp has many uses as medicine, food, building material and more, and is less harmful to the environment than many other crops, Chiles said.
“I am all about organic, and I’m concerned about the environment. We need to get out of this stigma about hemp,” he said.
For more information about Tanasi products, visit www.tanasi.com.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
