Monday January 13, 2020 North Carolina Senators will discuss NC S.B. 315. North Carolina Senators will decide on the 2020 North Carolina Hemp Incarceration Plan for NC Farmers and NC Citizens.
The organizations are urging lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 315, the North Carolina Farm Act of 2019, as soon as possible so law enforcement, prosecutors, licensed farmers and the public “clearly know what hemp substances are lawful and unlawful.” The bill was passed by the Senate in last year’s long session but stalled in the House, with most of the division focused on the smokable hemp section.
SB 315 defines smokable hemp as “harvested raw or dried hemp plant material, including hemp buds or hemp flowers, hemp cigars, and hemp cigarettes.” Hemp and marijuana both come from the cannabis plant, but hemp contains much smaller amounts of THC, the illegal psychoactive compound that causes the high from marijuana. Federal law currently defines industrial hemp as cannabis plants containing less than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight (marijuana can contain more than 30 percent).
North Carolina Lawmakers will purposefully be disregarding Federal Law and will face a lawsuit if they vote in approval for the ban on “smokable hemp”.