North Carolina Lawmakers Could See "Cannabill" for Medical Marijuana in 2019

By Tristan Dufresne 1/1/19 6:13PM

RALEIGH — In 2019, North Carolina could possibly join the growing list of states legalizing marijuana for medical use.

N.C. House Member Kelly Alexander, a Democrat from Charlotte representing District 107, is building a coalition of politicians and activists to advocate for a bill set to be introduced in the General Assembly in January or February.

Medical marijuana bills have previously been introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly to no success, including one Alexander sponsored in the 2017-2018 session, but the state lawmaker thinks that a bill this upcoming year has a fighting chance.

Statewide elections in November 2018 edged Democratic membership in the House and Senate chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly for the upcoming 2019-2020 session, a fact Alexander said he hopes will set conditions for the state's first law legalizing marijuana use in certain medical contexts.

"We have a much greater chance of getting something through this time than we have had in previous years," he said. "The governor's office is now willing to discuss it."

The Piedmont Sundial reached out to the office of Governor Roy Cooper about potential support for legalized medical marijuana in North Carolina, but has yet to receive its response.

A 2017 poll conducted by Elon University placed North Carolina public opinion at 80 percent in favor of some sort of legislation making Cannabis sativa and its primary psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), available to patients.

But high levels of popular support do not guarantee the passage of a bill in the North Carolina General Assembly. And despite the loss of its supermajority, the House will remain under the control of Republican lawmakers, who did not support any of the pro-marijuana legalization bills, medical or otherwise, that were introduced in the 2017-2018 session.

One of those bills, sponsored by Senate Member Paul Lowe, would have raised the amounts of marijuana possession necessary to incur certain criminal misdemeanor and felony classifications. Lowe's bill did not reach a floor vote during the 2017-2018 legislative session.

Legalized medical marijuana, established with state licensing for distribution centers and growing operations under the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, would bring in an estimated $250 million per year in state revenues according to the bill Alexander introduced in 2017.

The bill Alexander cosponsored in 2017 would have made medical marijuana available for patients diagnosed with a plethora of medical conditions and disorders, including cancer, HIV, celiac and Crohn's diseases, osteoporosis, Tourette's syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis.

The 2017 bill Alexander cosponsored would also have established a North Carolina Cannabis Research Program which would task the University of North Carolina to "undertake objective scientific research regarding the efficacy and safety of administering cannabis as part of medical treatment."

Alexander, first elected in 2008, is the son of former NAACP Board of Directors Chairman Kelly Alexander Sr., and the younger Alexander himself served as president of the N.C. chapter of the organization.

Alexander said he believes that a new bill's supporters can build support upon the Democrats' legislative wins this past November, and "a recognition by the voters that the [Republican] supermajority wasn't to their advantage" will further spur momentum.

Garrett Perdue, an organizer with the reform group Sensible South, said that his group finds the proposed bill "a little bit too aggressive, given the current political climate in North Carolina."

Perdue said that passage would be more likely with a bill that prohibits the "smoking of flower," meaning no joints, pipes, bongs or other popular methods of burning plant matter. He also sees the "homegrow" component of many medical cannabis bills in other states, which allows for personal cultivation by qualified patients, as a deal breaker in North Carolina. He went on to describe Alexander's plan as "a little too lenient…to get the [General Assembly] comfortable with any sort of legislative advance."

A 2017 poll conducted by Elon University places North Carolina public opinion at 80 percent in favor of some sort of legislation making Cannabis sativa and its primary psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) available to patients. But such high levels of popular support do not guarantee the passage of a bill. And despite the loss of its supermajority, the House will remain under the control of the GOP, a party with virtually no public support for any pro-marijuana legislation, medical or otherwise.

The closest precedent is the state's 2014 Epilepsy Alternative Treatment Act, which created a framework for the legal dispensation of cannabidiol (CBD), derived from marijuana. CBD, a chemical compound found in cannabis with significantly fewer psychoactive properties than THC, is allowed in a medical context under doctor's supervision. Thanks to the 2014 Farm Bill passed by the United States Congress, retail shops operating within the parameters of the lightly regulated nutritional supplement market are able to sell CBD products manufactured from industrial hemp rather than the cannabis flower, if the THC content is under 0.3 percent. According to some legal experts, however, N.C. laws related to CBD remain murky.

Over the last 10 years, numerous states have legalized or decriminalized the weed (decriminalization means loosened restrictions and/or decreased penalties). This past election cycle, Michigan voters voted to allow recreational sales, following Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and the District of Columbia. Utah joined 22 states, districts and commonwealths in establishing a medicalized system for those with specific ailments.

Karen O'Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), says marijuana usage has been shown to be beneficial by scientific evidence, at least with regard to medical use. MPP is an advocacy organization that works on campaigns nationwide. "There was a report by the National Academy of Sciences that came out in early 2017, and they found that there was conclusive evidence that medical cannabis alleviates chronic pain, and strong evidence that it also helps with nausea and appetite loss," she said, referring to a meta-study that reviewed approximately 10,000 scientific abstracts. The report made a formal recommendation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that expanding "access to research-grade marijuana, through the creation and approval of new facilities for growing and storing cannabis" was in the interest of public health.

O'Keefe says the federal government has made it "very difficult to study cannabis," but research coming out of other countries is also compelling; for example, in 2011 the Israel Medical Association Journal published research out of Tel Aviv University indicating that "half of patients administered cannabis went into complete remission from Crohn's disease," a particularly debilitating version of inflammatory bowel syndrome that significantly reduces quality of life.

The original plan for Representative Alexander's proposed bill was to allow individual counties to vote to opt in or out of the law, but there is a complication, according to Alexander, who says a localized referendum for legislation related to healthcare may be prohibited by "a clause in the [state] constitution."

Alexander says that that was the issue with the 2017-2018 bill, which shared co-sponsors with the newest bill. "Since we've had that first draft run into the constitutional issues, we're obviously trying to come to a consensus as to exactly which direction we want to move in."

Both last session's bill and a 2014 medical marijuana bill only made it into the Committee on Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House.

Bills to support legalized marijuana, even strictly for medical uses, have gotten resistance from some national organizations and think tanks, such as Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), which warns against a public health disaster in the making.

"You want to have medicines that go through clinical trials and are verified by science," said SAM spokesperson Luke Niforatos. "When it comes to medical marijuana, we think science should guide. No other medication is being put up to a majority vote, whether by legislators or citizens."

SAM's website cites studies indicating that marijuana is addictive and dangerous, particularly to adolescents.

The SAM site also adds, "The increase in support for legalization reflects the tens of millions of dollars poured into the legalization movement over the past 30 years. Legalization is not inevitable and there is evidence to show that support has stalled since 2013." Additionally, SAM writes, "Legalization is about one thing: making a small number of business people rich."

SAM advocates civil, not criminal, penalties for marijuana violations, and Niforatos says the organization is best described as "anti-commercial" in mission. "Listen, we don't want people to go to jail for smoking a joint," said Niforatos. "What we don't want to see are commercial sales and pot shops... We would oppose any kind of legislation that would create that kind of environment.

Niforatos claims that well-known tobacco companies and executives are poised to take over the recreational cannabis market as it expands across the country.

"Free-market capitalism has a dark side," Niforatos said, "Look at Big Tobacco and what has happened in the last 100 years; that was a complete unmitigated disaster that we are still paying the price for."

In 1977, North Carolina lawmakers approved a bill in 1977 that reduced the criminal classification for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor. State law currently classifies simple possession of 0.5 to 1.5 ounces of marijuana as a class 1 misdemeanor. Police departments in some municipalities, including Durham, have publicly deprioritized marijuana arrests.

It appears that those organizations that continue to advocate maintaining current federal drug sentencing guidelines and punitive policing are finding themselves on the fringe of the discourse. Even President Bill Clinton has changed his mind on approaches. In 1994 he pushed for a broader crime-control initiative named the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and endorsed the federal "three-strikes" where serious drug offenses in combination with "serious violent felonies" mandate a life sentence. Since leaving office Clinton has admitted that it was misguided and perhaps did more harm than good.

There is still resistance "from some in law enforcement," said O'Keefe. Two incidents involving police activism this past midterm election cycle caused controversy in Utah and North Dakota, where the voters of each state passed medical marijuana referendums. In both cases, law enforcement officers were publicly chastised for making use of official social media in opposing the campaigns in their respective states.

O'Keefe says, "We have had 20 years since the first medical marijuana law passed to understand that these can be written in a way that won't cause problems [for police]."

A 2017 Pew Center survey of 8,000 law enforcement officers nationwide found that almost two-thirds of those interviewed were in favor of either medical or recreational cannabis.