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The articles from Inside Politics With Steve Harrison appear first in his weekly newsletter, which takes a deeper look at local politics, including the latest news on the Charlotte City Council, what's happening with Mecklenburg County's Board of Commissioners, the North Carolina General Assembly and much more.

Cannabis advocates push for clarity on NC's bizarre cannabis law

marijuana plant
CC0 1.0
A marijuana plant.

A version of this news analysis originally appeared in the Inside Politics newsletter, out Fridays. Sign up here to get it first to your inbox.

Cannabis advocate and former Democratic congressional candidate Barbara Gaskins has filed civil rights complaints with N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice over the state’s puzzling marijuana laws.

North Carolina is one of the strictest states in the nation for regulating marijuana. Even medical use is prohibited.

But the state has a legal, freewheeling, and totally open market for smokable cannabis products with psychoactive effects. Stores openly sell THC-A (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid) products. Billboards advertising cannabis delivery services are plastered all over the interstates. From the Conference Drive bridge over Independence Boulevard, you can see a CMPD substation on one side and a new cannabis superstore on the other.

Here’s the trick: If you eat a THC-A flower, nothing happens.

But once you burn it — through a process known as decarboxylation — THC-A converts to regular THC. In other words, it gets you just as high as the illegal stuff, through the exact same process (smoking). You can also buy THC-infused gummies, drinks and other consumables.

Chris Suttle of Chapel Hill, who worked with Gaskins to file the complaint, said he believes minorities are being disproportionately arrested for traditional marijuana, while many THC-A stores are in white communities.

“We keep seeing a trend where minorities are being targeted more,” he said. “We would like a legal opinion from Jackson as to whether continued enforcement of cannabis laws violates state and federal constitutional protections.”

That potential disparity was on display in Charlotte at the end of 2023. Police confronted a woman at a bus stop in southwest Charlotte who they believed was smoking marijuana. She said it was legal THC-A. The confrontation escalated and ended in a violent arrest, though charges were later dropped.

Steve Harrison is WFAE's politics and government reporter. Prior to joining WFAE, Steve worked at the Charlotte Observer, where he started on the business desk, then covered politics extensively as the Observer’s lead city government reporter. Steve also spent 10 years with the Miami Herald. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated.