Month: February 2024

Intoxicating THC is openly sold in North Carolina

February 6, 2024

This post has turned into an ongoing and updated long look at open and flagrant sales of delta-9 THC in North Carolina.

Here’s a telling quote: “”Marijuana has been legal [in North Carolina] for a while now — we just didn’t realize it.” https://www.wunc.org/politics/2024-04-29/nc-legislature-cbd-hemp-thc-delta-9-regulations] Yes, regular old intoxicating marijuana is being quietly sold in retail storefronts across the state. It’s the tomato model: No licenses, no taxes, no age limits, no regulations.  Delta-8 THC is being sold, too, but it’s a side show to the original intoxicant, delta-9.

There are plausible claims of legality for these sales, claims that are largely and unchallenged as a practical matter. Much standard raw plant material or “flower” is said to be legal because it contains less than the federal limit of 0.3% Delta-9 THC. Gummies and other Delta-9 products, thanks to sugar and other non-intoxicants, stay under the 0.3% threshold at retail, too.   Maybe this open market benefits from a loophole, or maybe law enforcement is mostly standing down.

In any event, 0.3% looks like a technical glitch in the 2018 farm bill that Mitch McConnell pushed — to create opportunities in hemp cultivation for Kentucky farmers. But he didn’t know what he was doing, or the staffers who drafted the language didn’t. (When I worked for Congress, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Republicans’ and Democrats’ committee staffs flyspecked legislation. For tax, so did staffs from Treasury, the IRS, and Joint Tax. Might some staff weed fan have spotted this loophole or ambiguity in 2018 and kept quiet? Maybe agriculture bills don’t get anything like the technical scrutiny that tax bills do.)

So far, that marijuana market is thriving. North Carolina cities and counties and the state itself are mostly tolerating this market. Will Congress or our Legislature do anything about it? We’ll see. 

Here are three stories:

https://abc11.com/hemp-marijuana-cannibas-stores-north-carolina/12767483/:  “In its raw form, the THCa flower meets the legal qualifications of having less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC. But when heat is applied, like when the user smokes or vapes it, more of the product (the THCa) is converted to Delta-9 THC which allows its effect to mirror marijuana products sold in legalized states.”  

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