- [David H.] Changes may soon be coming to North Carolina's cannabis laws.

We look at the current situation and what lawmakers wanna do about it.

This is "State Lines."

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[bright music] ♪ - Welcome to "State Lines," I'm David Hurst.

Cannabis is one of those issues with lots of opinions, should we ban it, regulate it, legalize all of it?

Where most people agree though, is that they say the current laws here in North Carolina need some fixing.

I've spent the past few weeks looking into how we got here and what these laws actually look like.

Here's what I found out.

Right now in North Carolina, teenagers can walk into gas stations like this one and buy these, THC gummies, legally, with no ID.

- It is the Wild West out there.

- [Reporter] Wild West of cannabis in North Carolina.

- I mean it really is the Wild, Wild West.

It's a dangerous situation in North Carolina.

- North Carolina bans marijuana, yet teenagers can legally buy THC at gas stations.

How is this possible?

To find out, I spoke with a teenager whose life was forever changed by these products.

This is Dabney Ferris.

She's 18 years old, but when she was 15, something happened that changed her life.

- It first started, obviously, like with friends and just kinda like wanting to fit in and then it like just progressively got worse.

- [David H.] After school, Dabney and her friends would go to gas stations to buy THC products.

Most places sold to them, no questions asked.

- The very first time, I was nervous.

I was like, you guys do this, and you like don't like think anything of it?

Like, I was very surprised.

I mean, we were kids.

- [David H.] Over time, she became addicted to THC.

She says the drugs changed her.

- I was hooked from the very first time.

[siren blares] - [David H.] And Dabney isn't alone.

In North Carolina, teen emergency room visits from cannabis jumped 600% since 2019, and here's what most people don't know.

Teenage brains work differently than adult brains when it comes to THC.

The teenage brain is still developing, still forming new pathways.

When THC interferes with that development, it can cause lasting changes that may be permanent.

- Like, I think about to a daily basis.

I'm like, I did stuff to my brain that I can't reverse, and I will never be able to get that back.

- [David H.] So Dabney's story raises an obvious question.

How can teenagers buy drugs in a state where marijuana isn't allowed?

Well, it comes down to something called hemp.

Hemp and marijuana are the same plant.

The only difference is how much THC they have.

In 2018, Congress passed the Farm Bill.

This made hemp legal to grow and sell, but hemp plants could only have 0.3% THC.

Companies, though, found a loophole.

The 0.3% limit only applies to the plant itself.

It doesn't limit the final products, so companies take lots of hemp plants and pull out all the THC, then they put that concentrated THC into products like gummies.

Even though each plant has tiny amounts of THC, one gummy can have a whole lot more.

- When sold correctly, it's safe, and it's available to the public.

- [David H.] But even a lotta people in the cannabis business are calling for an age limit.

- So what we do is we scan everyone's ID when they come in for the first time.

This is the ABC Private Bar Membership app that's required for most North Carolina private bars.

- [David H.] Eric Stahl is the co-owner of Modern Apotheca.

- No product that we carry is not going to list the active ingredient.

- [David H.] They check every customer's ID, and the door stays locked until you scan your license.

- We understand these products should never find their ways into the hands of children, and they should have the same age gating that alcohol and other intoxicating products are, which is 21 plus.

- [Clerk] Let's see, this is the Brightside.

- [David H.] And other hemp shops agree.

Companies like Carolindica, who have several stores across The Triangle, think better rules would help everyone.

- What we see a lot of is confusion in the consumer side of like, you can go into one store and buy something, go into another store and think you're basically buying the same thing, and they're very different.

- [Clerk] And so the magic number you wanna look for is the THC.

- [David] Carolindica wants things, like lab testing and clear labels on every product, things they already do.

- There's nothing that we can do in our power to tell other companies how they should or shouldn't do things, right, that's kinda where you create this legislation that defines what's the way it's supposed to be done.

- [David H.] But nothing has been done yet.

Lawmakers have talked about new rules, but they haven't passed anything yet.

- So our goal is to help individuals find the right products for them.

- [David H.] Stahl hopes lawmakers can pass some sort of rules that keep products away from kids, but let adults still have access.

- We really need to work to remove the stigma that adults shouldn't have these products, these are bad products.

These are really healthy products, when they're made correctly and they're used by people who know what they're doing.

What we can't have is kids in the back of mom's car getting hold of the gummies that she accidentally left on the floor.

You have to treat hemp like you treat alcohol.

- [David H.] Some kids like Dabney likely would've benefited from these kinds of protections, but today, she's in recovery and getting her life back.

- I definitely think having support systems was the biggest part and having friends and people that like encouraged my recovery.

We need laws in place to protect people like me.

- [David H.] She even testified to lawmakers about what happened to her, hoping her experience will lead to some sort of change.

- I hope they can protect kids in the way that I wasn't protected.

It could have saved me from so many things that have affected me now and I want them to save other people.

- [David H.] Meanwhile, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein has created a group to study the state's cannabis policies and make recommendations.

[clears throat] A lot to unpack there.

Joining me here in studio are a pair of lawmakers, who are familiar with "State Lines."

We've got Senator Benton Sawrey with Johnston County to my right.

Next to him, Representative Phil Rubin from Wake County, and next to him, a newcomer here on "State Lines," District Attorney Matt Scott of Robeson County or Robeson County, excuse me.

Welcome sir, appreciate it.

- Good to be here.

- A lot to impact there, as I said.

Senator Sawrey, I wanna start with you.

We heard in that story Dabney was able to get her hands on THC products at 18.

We explored the why a little bit, but help give us a better understanding of why this is possible, how this is possible here in North Carolina.

- Yeah, sure, I think it goes back to, I mean, probably you could take the history of the hemp debate back, even as far as 2015, when we started looking at some limited applications of CBD and THC products in a medical setting.

We passed a pilot study back then.

We'd also looked at some limited uses for these products for epilepsy and seizure disorders.

I think intractable seizures was the technical term of it, and there's a very specific medical application for it.

But the 2018 Farm Act at the federal level really changed the game at this point by opening up hemp production with certain caps, certain species of hemp plants with a THC content of the 0.3%, which you'll hear a lot about, I'm sure, when you study this issue.

But in 2022, the North Carolina General Assembly conformed state law with federal law at that point, and you saw this market I guess of the consumable hemps and the ingestible hemps really explode in North Carolina.

There was an opportunity then I think to take a look at, but I don't think anybody really foresaw what was going to happen in North Carolina since that point in time.

But, it needs to change, right, and I think that a broad agreement you saw out of the General Assembly of this session.

There were policies advanced by both the House and the Senate that would put caps at 21 on the ability to purchase these products.

There also needs to be limitations on what you can do with advertising, and we're an outlier with our neighboring states right now.

Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, they all have limits on ages and advertising for this, and we've got to get that across the finish line because we owe it to the children in the state of North Carolina to make it happen.

- We'll get to some of those policies in just a minute, but Representative Rubin, you're on the other aisle of the legislature here.

Do you share some of the same insights as your colleague?

- I think so.

I think actually everything you said I agree with, and starting with, I thought your intro video really brought to the fore the issues we're having in North Carolina.

Kids should not be able to get these products.

Plain and simple, they should not be able to get 'em.

And it's really crying out at this point for a legislative solution to get there, and so I've been heartened 'cause both chambers have been putting forward bills that are thoughtful and both parties are aligned on those bills.

So, there's still a lotta work to do to get to a place of a final regulatory regime.

I think the Governor's Commission is really going to help with that, but I will say, and I know we'll talk more about it, I don't think we can wait for 2026 to take action on kids getting access.

I think that is something that we can tackle very imminently, and I have yet to meet someone who doesn't think that's a problem.

- And District Attorney Scott, you are the co-chair, or a co-chair on that government commission.

Help us understand how widespread this is.

Is this something you see/hear of a lot of in your county?

- Yes, it's just not in my county.

It's counties all over this state.

It's in every community.

If you were to go to every corner store or crossroads across counties in North Carolina, you'll see a vape shop or you'll see a gas station, that is selling this material.

I got involved with it just by seeing young people, like the young lady that you showed in your intro, whose lives are forever changed because of this illegal material bein' sold across the counter.

You have bad actors who's sellin' poison for profit to kids, the bottom line.

I partnered with the Police Chief in Hope Mills in Cumberland County just last year, and we brought in state, federal, and local of law enforcement officials, and they did search warrants in 107 vape shops across Robeson and Cumberland.

And every single one of those shops had illegal material, and that's what's bein' sold.

And it's not just the THC level that needs to be done, the products, how it's packaged.

A lot of this material is packaged with a specific intent to be sold to kids.

When you have packaging that looks like Doritos, Nerds candies, that is for kids, and so that needs to be changed and addressed.

- Yeah, and so million dollar question for both of you gentlemen.

Why haven't we been able to pass simple rules preventing kids from getting their hands on products like this yet?

- So, I think it's anytime you deal with THC and marijuana and the general drugs, I mean, there's a stigma that goes back, and the Republicans.

You saw, for example, and I'll use, there's a house bill that the Senate took a stab at some regulations this past session, and there's some Republicans that voted against that.

And I don't think it was because they disagreed with the concept of having age verifications and testing in place, but the general concept that they saw this as a legalization of a psychoactive substance, right, of THC.

So I think there's a policy choice that needs to be made.

Are we going to permit Delta-9, Delta-8, and THC ingestibles and consumables to be regulated and legalized in North Carolina, when in fact, we already have a defacto and de jure legalization because of the Federal Farm Act and what North Carolina did to conform with that standard.

What Matt talked about, the illegal substances, really, those have been allowed to proliferate because we don't have a regulatory system in place that can look at that.

So the federal government and North Carolina's 2022 law permits some of these products to be on the shelves, but we don't test, we don't inspect, we don't have any sort of licensing in place, like we do with alcohol, where somebody's looking over to see is this product what they're advertising it as.

And then candidly, I mean, because of chemistry and different processes, people are able to take Delta-9 substance from a hemp product and turn it into all sorts of different things.

I learned, and I'll admit I'm, I mean, maybe your viewers will get this, but I'm a big old square when it comes to these issues.

But when I rode around with ALE officers a couple weeks ago and looked at some of these vape shops in North Carolina and what products they're selling, I looked and saw something that looked like just marijuana sitting there in a jar on the shelf and asked what it was.

And they explained to me the concept of THCA, right.

THCA is not something that's regulated in the Farm Act.

It's not a psychoactive substance when it's in its form sitting there.

But when you heat it up, the THCA synthesizes and becomes a heavier THC content combined with the 0.3 dry weight.

So you have a circumstance, where you candidly could make the argument that we have recreational marijuana in North Carolina, which is deeply concerning because we do not, as a state, I think we're not ready for that from a policy perspective.

ALE is playing whack-a-mole with a lot of this.

Our local sheriff's departments are too, just because you're trying to find where some of these substances are coming from.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- And I just wanna jump off from that point that we've essentially accidentally gotten into this place where this is allowed.

And that doesn't mean we should have an immediate reaction to ban it, but it does mean it cries out for us to have a thoughtful regulatory approach.

And like, when I think through this issue, I think there's kinda four things to think about.

Kids shouldn't have access to it.

People should be able to read the label and know what they're getting, and they should actually get what that label says and not other things.

We should be marketing products that are actually safe for people.

This goes to some of those derivatives, not all of those are even known to be safe.

And then, when we do this process, I do think we need to work hand-in-hand with industry, so no one is taken by surprise.

Run an open process, hear everything out.

I think the Governor's Commission is going to do that.

I think if we can get alignment, and I'm new to the legislature, I'm just six months in, but what I don't see right now is there's a bunch of individual bills that move around, but it would be really nice to agree on sort of a statement of principles and then run the evidence down and get to a final compromise that gets us somewhere.

But even for folks who are nervous about legalizing any of this, I would emphasize to them that it is legal now, so a more regulated system is going to be so much better than the Wild West we have now, which is a really accurate way to.

- And if I can jump in on that.

You could have somebody like me, who I wish you could ban it all to be honest with you, however, that's just like you said, we have a defacto legalization of everything under the sun when it comes to THC right now, and it's not bein' regulated.

And so, we were asleep at the wheel, we ran out off the road into the ditch, now we're lookin' around going, "How in the world did we get in the ditch?"

That's where we are, and this is where I give the Governor a lot of praise is that he brought together people on this council from both sides of the aisle, not just both sides of the aisle, but also from every sector that touches this, law enforcement, medical, to come together to say, "Okay, if it is in the people of North Carolina's will, "reflected in their elected officials "in the General Assembly "that some form of regulation or legalization comes about, "and it's the will of the Governor to sign that legislation, "here is a structured regulatory system, "so that we do not live through what we've lived through "now from the 2018 Farm Act."

And we have fewer and fewer young ladies and young people, like the one you showed in the introductory, with their lives forever changed in a negative way.

And that's what needs to happen because law enforcement as it's structured now, you mentioned ALE.

ALE I think only has about 100 agents across the state.

You look at local sheriff's departments and local police departments, they don't have the manpower to go after all that's there.

And so, we need tools in our toolkit to address the problem, and right now we don't have that.

And I think we are at a place that, I feel confident that we're gonna get there because we have to get there.

I've spoken to a medical professional at Brynn Marr Hospital in Jacksonville, and she said she had a whole wing of her hospital with individuals, adults, these are adults in there because of psychosis brought upon by ingesting this material that you can buy at a gas station.

That's gotta change.

- [David H.] Sure.

- And I'm gonna jump into that.

I mean, talk about some of the proposals we've had.

So, it was House Bill 297, which was something that came over to the House.

It talked about, I think, some of these THC products on school grounds.

The Senate took that bill, and we substituted into it what we proposed to be a regulatory scheme that looked at the ALE, that gave the ALE the tools that they would need to inspect, to set up the certification process.

Because when you walk into these shops and you ask 'em about the product, they're going to hand you a three binder and say, "Look, here's the testing, it was tested.

"It's 0.3% dry weight by volume."

But you don't know, there's no tracking to show that that product lines up with that test, which is something I think that responsible business owners are gonna do.

But we're, I mean, if we assume that everybody's responsible in this space, I think we're being naive about where it's gone.

I don't know that anybody foresaw in 2022 or even 2018 that this market was going to become what it was.

When the hemp market was opened up under the Farm Act, I think they saw that this is a boon to farmers, that some of the fibers from the hemp products would take the place of different materials that we're seeing.

There was a huge boom in North Carolina as a matter of fact.

I think close to 16,000 acres were certified for hemp production in North Carolina, and now, because of various reasons, not being able to track some of the genetic strands and whether they're going to match up with the 0.3% dry weight, the cost of the product being sold, the uncertainty because of the flood that occurred back then, a lot of them backed away.

It's become very costly.

The market's become tough, and you're not seeing North Carolina grow as much as they were several years ago.

But what's happened is it's morphed into this, I think, retail space that we did not foresee.

And something else, and, I didn't hear her mention it, and we haven't talked about it yet, but it's the THC infused beverages, right.

I mean, you can go to Total Wine or a retail shop now and buy a THC infused beverage off the shelf and no age verification or requirement to see it.

And you go to some of these less responsible vape shops, and you're gonna see beverages with huge amounts of THC infused into 'em.

- [Phil] That's right.

- So we need to make a policy as a state, do we choose to regulate that, and at what level do we do so?

- And Senator, sorry, I wanna pick up on a point you made about farming.

A lot of these farmers thought that this would be a good, that hemp would be a good pivot from tobacco, and so it's not really just about laws and regulations.

I wanna go into our next story, because it talks about this boom that many farmers thought would happen and then it turned out it really didn't.

So let's dive into the hemp dream and North Carolina and what might be next for the future.

- We need to really be on top of our weed management early on.

- [David H.] David Suchoff works directly with farmers who wanna try new crops, so after the Farm Bill made hemp legal in 2018, his phone would not stop ringing.

Farmers had questions, lots of them.

Could hemp replace their tobacco?

How much money could they make?

Would it really work on their land?

- It's cannabis sativa, right?.

- [David H.] Suchoff says he watched something amazing happen.

North Carolina went from no hemp farms to over 1500 licensed growers at its peak.

- It really took off because it just fits so well in the tobacco production model, so a lot of our tobacco farmers were growing it.

They could utilize the labor that they already had.

They could utilize the equipment they had, their tobacco barns to dry it.

- [David H.] Many farmers saw hemp as their way out of tobacco.

They thought they'd found their new cash crop, but that excitement didn't last very long.

The market got flooded, prices collapsed, and hemp flower that once sold for $250 a pound dropped to around $160.

- Because the demand really wasn't there for that material, we saw a rapid decline.

And so, it was very much a bubble, and that bubble burst.

We're only growing this for this stem.

- [David H.] But there is one kind of hemp that's slowly making a comeback, fiber hemp.

- But then inside the stem, you also have this wooden, this woody core.

- [David H.] Unlike CBD hemp, which is grown for the flowers, fiber hemp is grown for the stems.

- So there's a lot of excitement there.

- [David H.] Those stems get turned into textiles, construction materials, and other industrial products.

- North Carolina historically has a very large textile industry.

There's been a lot of offshoring of that industry, but there's a lot of interest now on bringing back that industry or at least bringing more innovation to the textile industry here in North Carolina.

And they see fiber hemp as being one aspect of bringing that innovation back.

- [David H.] Well what about CBD hemp?

Could it make a similar comeback?

- CBD demand goes up and down, but I think it's gonna stay, but a lotta that may change based off of some of the laws that may or may not be passed.

- [David H.] This uncertainty has both CBD and fiber hemp farmers watching what happens at both the state and federal levels.

- Farmers are certainly nervous about what the regulations are gonna look like in the future.

Hemp is the only crop that a farmer has to get an FBI background check to grow, and so there's an added layer of bureaucracy and paperwork and costs associated with growing hemp that farmers don't have to deal with.

And that's a big turnoff for a lotta farmers, and so farmers are keenly watching to see what will or won't come down the pipeline.

- [David H.] For now, hemp farming in North Carolina is a much smaller industry than it was five years ago, but it's not dead.

- And so we're really trying to get this right when it starts to bloom.

- As markets stabilize and new uses develop, some farmers are betting on hemp's future, just a little bit more carefully this time.

So Senator Sawrey, one thing we haven't talked about yet is medical marijuana.

What is really the difference between medical marijuana and hemp, and are these things that lawmakers are looking at handling together or separate?

- So, I think you can't really address.

Well, with medical marijuana, I mean, obviously hemp would be in the marketplace, but I think you can address 'em separately to an extent.

But again, I think the regulatory regime needs to be in place with hemp.

I think we need to address the age and the advertising variable.

I don't know if there's an appetite this session, we have a very limited amount of time to look at medical marijuana, but it's something that obviously the Senate has taken up and passed on several prior sessions.

I expect it'll continue to be a topic of conversation.

It's there, it enjoys widespread support in the public.

I think some polling data we've seen shows that over 70% of North Carolinians support a controlled, prescription-based medical marijuana marketplace, and that would be a seed-to-sale component that is very tightly controlled.

We've learned a lot of lessons from what other states have done around the South, and I imagine we'll apply those in North Carolina.

- And Representative Rubin, is this as simple as looking at three choices, ban it, regulate it, or legalize it entirely, or is it a little more complicated than that?

- I think everything's a little more complicated than that.

I think we should pass legislation on medical marijuana, but I also do not wanna see it block the hemp reform because it manages to be a contentious issue.

I agree with everything you said.

I think that we could do carefully what other states have done, but I think if we try and bite off too much at once, my fear is we're back here in two years talking about why it still hasn't happened yet.

So that's why I think I would see it in three phases.

We really need to tackle the availability to children, and I think that's something we could do right away, there's a consensus.

Then the second piece is the Governor's Commission, which I think is really thoughtful, will have a lotta recommendations.

How do you do the testing?

What testing do you require?

What does the labeling requirement look like?

All of that for hemp.

And then the third part is then to look at medical marijuana and things like that.

The reason I think it should be in that step is that we really have to get steps one and two done pretty promptly, and I'm really afraid of ladening this with too many things at once and then it just falls apart.

- Dave Scott, what are your hopes for the Governor's Commission?

What do you hope to be accomplished there?

- Well, I hope what's accomplished is what we've talked about here, right.

It's the General Assembly's decision on whether or not this medical marijuana or any kinda marijuana reform passes.

It's the hopes of this council that whatever decision they make, whether if it's to have medical marijuana passed, that there is a strong regulatory scheme that we come up with, potentially even draft legislation, but a strong regulatory system to prevent what we've seen over the last few years.

And if we have that, I think you'll have less and less of these young ladies and youth, and of the young lady you saw in the intro, and youth being destroyed, their lives being destroyed.

We have too many, one's too many.

And my community and every community in this state has been affected by it, and I'm confident that we will get there 'cause I'm confident our General Assembly sees the need.

I'm confident our Governor sees the need, and when those three come together, I think we can solve this problem.

- Well, we look forward to hearin' the recommendations and the developments from the council.

We look forward to seeing what comes out the General Assembly as well in the next coming months or year, but gentlemen, that's all the time we have for today.

Appreciate your insight and your background and your expertise on this topic.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- And thank you at home for joining us and continue the conversation.

I'm David Hurst, thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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