Hemp, CBD get permanent legal status in NC after 11th-hour rescue

Just two days before it was set to become illegal, North Carolina legislators approved a bill legalizing the production and sale of hemp.

And one day before the deadline, Gov. Roy Cooper signed the bill into law.

The state Senate voted 41 to 2 on Wednesday to pass Senate Bill 455 and Cooper signed it on Thursday, permanently removing hemp from the state’s list of controlled substances. Hemp was legalized several years ago as part of a temporary pilot program that was set to expire at the end of June. The crop is used to produce popular CBD health products.

There are over 1,500 hemp producers in North Carolina, according to an estimate from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. These farms likely employ thousands of rural workers, who could have been out of jobs if the legislature allowed hemp to become illegal.

“I know that there’s a sigh of relief on the part of a lot of folks around the state that it was taken care of,” Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican, told reporters after the vote.

This bill does not legalize marijuana. A separate medical marijuana bill did pass the Senate but has since stalled in the House.

House and Senate standoff

The last-minute passage comes after weeks of frustration over the issue and stalling from both chambers. SB 455 passed the House at the beginning of June, but then remained in the Senate Rules Committee for weeks without movement.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 762 — the Farm Act — originally included language legalizing hemp, but was only able to make it out of the House Agriculture Committee after removal of that provision. Rep. Jimmy Dixon, a Republican from Duplin County, chairs the committee and told reporters that about a third of House Republicans would have voted against the Farm Act if hemp legalization was included.

On Tuesday, Rep. John Ager, a Democrat from Buncombe County, attempted to amend the Farm Act with a last-minute fix to save hemp, but it failed.

Dixon repeatedly said that he was confident the Senate would take up SB 455 and fix the issue, making changes to the Farm Act unnecessary.

Sen. Brent Jackson, a Duplin County Republican, delivered a speech prior to the vote detailing the many obstacles that hemp legalization had encountered in the General Assembly.

“Hemp was dead yesterday in the House, but this body sitting here — including myself — have supported every Farm Act we have done, and we support our farmers whether they are a 25,000-acre grain farmer in our northeast … or they are a half-acre hemp farmer or herb farmer in the mountains of North Carolina —we stand with our farmers.”

Hemp activists have long looked to Jackson, a farmer himself, for support in the legislature.

“We consider Sen. Brent Jackson one of the champions of the North Carolina hemp industry,” said Blake Butler, executive director of the Southeast Hemp Association. “He is one of those legislators that has been with us the whole time.”

Hemp producers react

Hemp farmers and sellers spent the last month anxiously keeping up with negotiations, with many fearing they’d be forced to close their businesses.

Eric Stahl is the founder of Modern Apotheca, a hemp and CBD store based in Raleigh. He and his wife started their business after finding that CBD products helped her manage her Crohn’s disease.

“I never thought that I’d have to sell a bunch of Republican senators on personal freedom and choice — they tend to be for that,” Stahl said.

Waylon Saunders, a hemp farmer in Asheboro, told The News & Observer that if the state didn’t pass a bill legalizing hemp, he didn’t know what would happen to his business.

“I’m sitting on quite a bit of inventory that if they don’t renew it this week — I guess I’m gonna have to burn it,” he said.

John Boccella, founder of The Hemp Company in Raleigh, told The N&O prior to the vote that he didn’t plan to close his business if hemp became illegal.

“These products are still federally legal,” he said. “And I think that anybody with any common sense, whether it’s law enforcement, or a judge, or a General Assembly member, would be crazy to arrest me on Friday or Saturday for selling these products.”

Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, said his organization had been in contact with regulators in the state and urged hemp sellers not to panic if a deal isn’t reached.

“I’m quite confident that if for some reason this blows up, they’re not going to be setting out enforcement actions to try and arrest people for selling hemp,” he told The N&O in a phone interview.

On Thursday, the Democratic governor said the new law would provide certainty for farmers.

“Agriculture is North Carolina’s largest industry,” Cooper said in a news release, “and giving North Carolina farmers certainty that they can continue to participate in this growing market is the right thing to do for rural communities and our economy.”

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.