A legislative attempt to protect law enforcement's ability to search people's vehicles whether an officer detects legal hemp or illegal marijuana in the car cleared the House Wednesday as legislators tinkered with a wide-ranging farm bill in an effort to address police concerns.
The General Assembly has been back and forth on hemp this session and likely will continue to do so as the 2019 Farm Act and its proposed regulations for the young hemp industry head back to the Senate for more debate.
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Most of the concern centers on smokable hemp. It looks and smells like marijuana, but it doesn't get smokers high, and it's legal in North Carolina as an unforeseen, and profitable, consequence of 2015 regulations put in place to boost industrial hemp farming in North Carolina.
Smokable hemp would be illegal come May of next year under Senate Bill 315, giving farmers time to sell their current crop before a phase-out takes effect. That phase-out is meant to stem worries of a de facto legalization for marijuana.
Sheriffs, police and district attorneys around the state also fear a loss of the probable cause that may lead to bigger busts when an officer, or a drug dog, smells weed. An amendment Wednesday seeks to protect those busts until the ban goes into effect, saying any evidence of other crimes obtained in a search can't be thrown out just because what an officer thought was marijuana turned out to be hemp.
The amendment came from Rep. Joe John, D-Wake, who is a former judge. It passed on a bipartisan 86-27 vote after debate that often centered on the prospect of people being arrested, and their vehicles searched, because they had a legal product that is sold in stores.
"This is a clear case of this body seeking to violate the constitutional rights, yet again, of the people that we are sworn to protect from this exact problem," Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, said during the floor debate.
An attempt from Rep. Derwin Montgomery, D-Forsyth, to rein the measure in a bit by saying probable cause couldn't be based on smell alone, essentially requiring an officer to see something that looks like marijuana, was shot down 37-75.
The debate exposed disagreement among attorneys in the House about how this would play out in the courts.
"This amendment does nothing," said Rep. David Rogers, R-Rutherford. "Nowhere in this amendment does it change what probable cause is."
In addition to hemp, the underlying measure deals with a number of farming issues, from hog farms to sweet potatoes. It also picked up an amendment Wednesday to give county commissioners more power to limit shooting ranges on farms.
The bill redefines the state's definition of agritourism, expanding the things exempt from local zoning laws as long as they're on a bona fide farm. Among the additions: shooting ranges and skeet shooting, an issue that has sparked concern for neighbors who don't want those businesses nearby.
Rep. Julia Howard, R-Davie, won an amendment Wednesday that would give county commissioners a say, allowing them to determine whether proposed shooting facilities meet local zoning rules as well as guidelines set by the state Wildlife Resources Commission.
Her amendment was approved 98-14.
The House also added a study to the bill on how the state can help the state's shrinking dairy industry.
A Democratic effort to narrow some of the bill's language on hog farms didn't pass muster with the body's GOP majority. The Sierra Club's North Carolina chapter said after the House vote that a section dealing with biogas upgrades at hog waste lagoons will allow farms to "avoid upgrading to environmentally superior technologies" and "may undermine a 2007 ban" on construction of new lagoons.
Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, said nothing in the bill goes against the 2007 moratorium.
The bill, as written, says biogas projects can't "result in an increase in the permitted capacity of the swine farm, as measured by the annual steady state live weight capacity of the swine farm." An amendment from Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, would narrowed that language.