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Should North Carolina ban smokable hemp?

By Dustin George
Staff Writer, The Shelby Star

Posted at 9:51 AM
Updated at 9:51 AM

As other states are discussing the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana, North Carolina legislators are arguing over whether or not to ban smoking the plant’s cousin.

The Farm Act, a piece of legislation which provides legal frameworks for everything from skeet shooting and machine repair to hog farms has been bogged down over a disagreement over the state’s budding industrial hemp industry.

Some legislators, at the request of law enforcement agencies from around the state, are pushing to reclassify smokable hemp in the legal definitions for marijuana, effectively outlawing the product.

Hemp flowers contain cannabidiol, or CBD, which many claim has medicinal uses for a variety of ailments. The compound can be ingested a number of ways, from oils and tinctures to creams and aromatics, but the most popular form tends to be by smoking it.

Hemp flowers also contain small amounts of THC, but not enough to produce the high associated with marijuana.

Hemp was made legal in North Carolina in 2015 for industrial purposes and has quickly grown into a major player in the state’s agriculture industry. Smokable hemp became legal last year after federal laws were changed to encourage farmers to start growing the plant.

Legal worries

The effort to ban smokable hemp stems from a claim from the State Bureau of Investigation that because hemp and marijuana look and smell alike, there is no way to enforce existing drug laws.

“This is a de-facto legalization of marijuana,” said Mike Miller, district attorney for Cleveland and Lincoln counties. “I’ve spoken to our senator and I’ve told him, respectfully, if you want to legalize marijuana then have the political courage to have a bill that says we are legalizing marijuana. But don’t say we don’t want to legalize marijuana and put it in the Farm Act, because that’s what it’s doing. We can’t enforce the law if we have legal, smokable hemp.”

Miller, who sits on an executive committee for district attorneys across the state, said he’s been opposed to the legalization of hemp since 2015.

“If we stop a car and an officer says he smells marijuana and the guy says ‘oh no, it’s hemp,’ how do I know the difference,” he said. “If smokable hemp remains legal, we lose that probable cause to search that car.”

That loss brings with it some extra baggage, Miller said. Many times during searches, police often find stolen or illegal firearms. If they lose the ability to conduct those searches, those weapons will remain on the streets, he said.

It would also force departments around the state to retire their drug dogs, which are trained to signal when they smell THC, but can’t determine the difference between hemp and marijuana.

“To me, this is absolutely a public safety issue. There’s a lot of money (in hemp), but are we going to put money ahead of public safety,” he said.

Cash crop

Since its legalization, hemp has taken off in North Carolina. The state is heralded as one of the best places to grow the plant as, like tobacco before it, cannabis plants seem to do well in the state’s soil and environmental blend of heat and humidity.

It’s also grown as a place to buy and sell hemp products. Shops have been cropping up all over the state in recent years, including two shops in Cleveland County and a farm in the Casar area. Since smokable hemp became legal, it’s turned into a top seller for many of those shops.

Josh Biddix, owner of Broad River Hemp in Shelby, said smokable hemp has sold better than any other product. The store sells pre-rolled cigarettes and the flowers, which can be rolled into cigarettes.

“Just looking at the last two months, smokables count for roughly 26% of our sales. It’s really big for us,” said Biddix.

In addition to his store, Biddix also operates a small farm, where he is growing flowers to harvest and sell.

“The margins on the smokable flower are very good. Wholesale it can go for $1,800 -$2,000 per pound,” he said.

By comparison, hemp biomass, which is often used in textiles, sells for less than $100 per pound.

A veteran and former police officer, Biddix said he sympathizes with the concerns law enforcement officials have about smokable hemp and its proximity to marijuana, but he doesn’t agree with the idea that legal hemp means legal marijuana.

“They may lose some of that probable cause, but in my experience, it’s not the job of the people to conform to the laws, it’s the government’s responsibility to conform to what the people want,” he said.

Biddix added that some tests have been developed that can determine the difference between hemp and marijuana but have not been brought to North Carolina.

A report this week by an NBC affiliate in the Washington D.C. area backs up that claim, focusing specifically on a Swiss-made test that can supposedly distinguish between high and low amounts of THC.

Consequences for farmers

Advocates for smokable hemp claim that banning the product now would hurt farmers around the state and could discourage some from getting into the business at all.

“We work with farmers in a lot of states, and we encourage them to diversify their crops... It gives them a way to play an emerging market out,” said Brad Todd, owner of Grower’s Hemp in Stanley County, and a business partner of Biddix.

Todd has been one of the most active voices in the fight over smokable hemp this summer.

“A lot of our farmers are family farms and commodity farmers. Banning smokable hemp is just cutting them off at the knees,” he said. “I just don’t see any way that this ban could have a silver lining for either side.”

For his part, Biddix said he would still grow smokable flowers, but he would start selling it out of state. But the mere threat of the ban has already sent some packing.

“I already know two farmers who have put their farms up for sale. They want to go somewhere that is friendlier to smokable flower,” Biddix said.

Middle ground

Compromise is, in theory, one of the principles of good governance, and some involved in the discussion over smokable hemp are looking for just that.

In order to limit concerns over probable cause or possible impaired driving, Biddix said he would be in favor of a law for smokable hemp similar to the state’s open container laws on alcohol.

While he’s opposed to the general idea of legal smokable hemp, Miller said that if the plant is found to have proven medical benefits, he would be OK with a medical exemption for smokable hemp, so long as the person smoking can provide a doctor’s prescription or some sort of ID card similar to what states with legal medical marijuana require.

Legal road

The farm act passed the state Senate back in June with a provision that would reclassify marijuana to include forms of smokable hemp starting December 2020. That date would give law enforcement officials time to develop a test to determine if a product is hemp or marijuana.

Over the last week, the bill has been passed around the House finance and judiciary committees where legislators have argued over whether or not to move that date up to December of this year. The bill did eventually pass through one of those committees with language that would make smokable hemp illegal by the end of the year.

According to a spokesman for House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, the bill is expected to go to the House floor sometime in the next two weeks for a vote.

If approved, it would head back to the Senate for more revisions before it could be sent to Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk.

“Discussions about the bill are ongoing, and the Speaker is working to build consensus for state laws that allow the hemp industry to grow and address the concerns of public safety officials about smokable hemp and its impact on their duties to enforce existing drug laws,” Joseph Kyzer, a spokesperson for Moore’s office said.

Kyzer added that Moore supports the bill as it passed in the House committees.

Source: https://www.shelbystar.com/news/20190721/should-north-carolina-ban-smokable-hemp