As hemp’s future hangs in the balance, NC policymakers look ahead to regulate cannabis

When members of the North Carolina House and Senate reconvene in November, they will be faced with having to decide how to regulate intoxicating hemp products. The two chambers were at odds in July over House Bill 328 (opens in a new tab), which would ban hemp with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC and prohibit the sale of any hemp consumables, including CBD, to anyone under 21.

House members opted to wait until after November’s midterm elections, not wanting to upset a $4 billion industry that employs 16,000 people in North Carolina.

In Washington, the hemp industry received a one-month reprieve (opens in a new tab) this week from a national ban on intoxicating hemp products as part of a short-term funding bill. The U.S. House delayed the ban from taking effect until Dec. 11, as the White House pushes to delay or somehow fix the national ban. At the same time, the Trump administration has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, the same class as Tylenol.

While the outlook is hazy, the end of the year could bring big changes for both the hemp and cannabis industries.

Hemp consumables are largely unrestricted in our state, but North Carolina is in the unique minority of states in which marijuana is fully illegal for both recreational and medicinal purposes.

State lawmakers are trying to navigate how to best protect minors from hemp-derived cannabinoids, while also preparing for a future that could include some form of legal cannabis.

39 states, 39 approaches

The North Carolina Advisory Council on Cannabis, appointed in June 2025 by Gov. Josh Stein, has been meeting for months to develop a comprehensive approach to regulate cannabis sales and create a safe, legal market for adults that protects kids.

Nearly 40 states have already enacted cannabis regulations, but no two are the same.

Yasha Kahn, co-founder of MCR Labs, has been involved in cannabis testing for more than a decade. Kahn was invited to offer his expertise to the advisory council last week, as that group explores a framework for legalization.

North Carolina policymakers will have to decide on an endless number of variables in regulating cannabis, including who should handle testing and at what point in the process the product should be tested.

Kahn said each state has unique testing requirements with no real consensus. And each state may have its own approach to testing batch sizes, packaging, total THC definitions, and regulatory audits.

“Instead of looking at this as a huge mess, it really is 39 individual experiments on policy with much of the data available that we can analyze,” said Kahn. “We can see which policies have worked, which ones haven’t.”