North Carolina lawmakers advance bill banning legal hemp products from schools

North Carolina lawmakers want to ban legal hemp products from public school grounds.

Tobacco products are already banned from North Carolina public schools. The House Health Committee on Tuesday advanced a bipartisan bill, known as House Bill 328, that would require public school districts to also adopt a written policy prohibiting the use of Delta 8 and Delta 9 products.

Delta 8 is found in trace amounts of marijuana and hemp, but can be made by changing the plant’s genetics to increase potency. Delta 9 is more powerful and can have psychoactive properties.

The products can be dangerous despite being legal for people aged 18 and older, said state Rep. Carla Cunningham, a sponsor of the bill.

“Both substances can still have negative effects, particularly for minors, and pose potential health risks like impaired cognitive function and judgment,” the Mecklenburg County Democrat said. She added that the ban would also apply to school teachers and staff.

The bill also rewrites state law to clarify that vaping products are included under North Carolina’s existing school tobacco ban. Cunningham said school districts have struggled to keep vaping products out of schools.

“There are numerous discipline actions that are being implemented across the entire state by different school board districts,” she said. “What we’re trying to do here is to put something in place that will be unified, that all school boards and school districts will have available to them as a tool.”

State Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, was the only Health committee member to offer feedback. Rather than instruct school districts to write their own hemp bans, Blackwell said he’d prefer for the bill to create a one-size-fits-all ban of hemp products on school grounds.

Delta 8 and Delta 9 are often packaged to look like regular food, candy, chips and other sweets that might be attractive to children.

The products are legal so long as they have 0.3% or less tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. But investigations have found delta products with more than the legally allowable amount of THC.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about Delta 8, saying the substance led to an increase in reports to the nation’s poison control centers.

House Bill 328 goes next to an education committee for further review.