North Carolina, the Wild West of Hemp

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This story is part 2 of “Barely Legal,” The Assembly’s investigation into North Carolina hemp. Learn more here. 

At first, Lt. Jay Floyd ignored the complaints he received about Onslow County’s vape shops. As the new leader of the narcotics division of the sheriff’s office, he had bigger concerns than teenagers scoring tobacco. 

But throughout 2023, outreach grew more serious. “We started getting calls and complaints that ‘my kid is in the hospital because his or her lungs are messed up from these vapes,’” Floyd testified in a deposition earlier this year. According to court documents, detectives also received “multiple reports” of students overdosing on vapes. 

Floyd testified that he heard from confidential informants that the shops were “selling weed” masquerading as legal hemp. He suggested that sales from these stores had led to more than 1,200 Marines being booted from Camp Lejeune after failing drug tests. (A Camp LeJeune spokesperson told The Assembly in an email that the Marine Corps base “cannot reliably verify the figures referenced in the deposition testimony.”) 

He also suspected the stores of selling harder drugs than marijuana. Floyd testified that a young woman purchased gummies containing psilocin and psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compounds in magic mushrooms, at a vape shop, ate them, and “went absolutely crazy.” He said a Marine consumed the same product and “took a dive off a third deck over there—thought he could fly—and died.” (A Camp LeJeune spokesperson confirmed a 2024 fatality “involving the consumption of psychotropic drugs.”) 

According to Floyd’s testimony and court records, he determined that all of the county’s vape shops were operating illegally and needed to be shut down. 

On April 3, 2024, the sheriff’s office and other law enforcement agencies raided 71 Onslow County vape shops and confiscated about 3,000 pounds of suspected marijuana. They found psilocybin in “just a few” stores, Floyd testified. (The raids sparked a federal lawsuit, which led to his deposition.)

“Many of these products come from China, with little or no regulation about what they contain,” Floyd’s boss, Sheriff Chris Thomas, declared at a press conference shortly after the raids. “Most of these items are packaged in packaging that’s appealing to children.”

The raids ultimately led to more than 40 arrests on felony charges. Two years later, prosecutors appear to have secured only five plea bargains for misdemeanor marijuana possession. The other cases are awaiting trial or have been dropped. 

Similar operations followed in other eastern North Carolina counties. Yet officials have learned that, amid hemp’s legal gray areas, it’s not easy to make charges stick. 

State laws can be confusing and even contradictory, experts say. Search warrants sometimes rely on legal or scientific misinterpretations. Prosecutors have to prove that store owners knew their products were illegal. As a result, many cases stall or collapse. 

Dustin Brauns, vice chair of the industry advocacy group Cultivating Breakthroughs in Healthy Development (CBHD), argued that retailers have been targeted by cops who “go rogue and go wild” and “make up their own assumptions of what laws mean” to “make business owners criminals.” 

But law enforcement officials say they have few tools to combat what they view as a growing public health crisis. Since hemp became legal, cannabis-related emergency department visits among North Carolina youths have risen by almost 1,000%, according to data obtained by The Assembly.  

Both sides agree on the underlying problem: The state’s hemp market has no rules. 

North Carolina is one of seven states that completely prohibit marijuana, but it doesn’t regulate hemp at all. It doesn’t ban sales to minors or require accurate labeling. It doesn’t license retailers or manufacturers, tax hemp like alcohol or tobacco, or ensure products are free of hazardous substances. 

This arrangement has allowed hemp businesses to flourish. It also left them vulnerable not just to scattershot police raids but also to a more existential threat. A looming federal crackdown on intoxicating hemp products could put them out of business later this year. 

Hemp advocates have begged the General Assembly to create a regulatory framework that could mitigate the damage. For now, though, the state’s hemp market remains what insiders call the “wild, wild West.”  

“We’re in this situation because we’ve been totally and utterly asleep at the wheel,” Robeson County District Attorney Matt Scott said. “Adults are suffering, but more importantly, kids are suffering—and we haven’t even seen what this is going to do to the brains of these young people.”

‘The Best Cannabis State’

Congress nudged open the door to legal hemp in 2014 with legislation permitting state-run research and pilot programs. Four years later, lawmakers kicked that door down, albeit accidentally. 

Then-U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell thought he could give former tobacco farmers in his home state of Kentucky a boost by legalizing hemp. Analysts predicted a huge market for hemp’s primary compound, the nonintoxicating cannabidiol (CBD), which studies suggest can help with anxiety, insomnia, and other health issues. 

McConnell never imagined that the 2018 Farm Bill would give rise to a leviathan of Temu marijuana.

“There was a lot of discussion about, ‘What is this? Is this the same as the illicit cousin?’” he said at the time. “I think we’ve moved past that, and most members of the Senate understand that these are two very different plants.”

Except, they’re not. 

“Hemp and marijuana, they’re the same species,” said David Suchoff, an NC State University plant sciences professor and director of the Hemp Research Consortium. “The difference between hemp and marijuana at this point is just a legal definition.”

“We’re in this situation because we’ve been totally and utterly asleep at the wheel.”

Matt Scott, Robeson County District Attorney

The Farm Bill defined hemp as Cannabis sativa L. with less than 0.3% delta-9 THC. (Marijuana typically contains 15-25% THC, Suchoff said.) Lawmakers assumed that was strict enough to preclude intoxicating hemp products. They were wrong. 

Hemp producers quickly figured out how to get people high while sidestepping the delta-9 limit. By 2023, demand for intoxicating hemp exceeded $28 billion nationwide, according to a report from Whitney Economics, which tracks cannabis markets. 

Perfectly Legal Hemp

With a little imagination, perfectly legal hemp can produce intoxicants that rival anything marijuana has to offer.     

For starters, the small percentage of delta-9 permitted in hemp products can obscure a large dose. Hemp also contains THCA, which converts to delta-9 when heated, such as through smoking or vaping. This provided hemp companies with a workaround: Retailers’ shelves are stacked with products that advertise THCA levels well above 0.3%. 

At first glance, the 2018 Farm Bill appears to ban those products—a position the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other law enforcement agencies have adopted. The bill requires hemp plants to be tested for “total THC”—a formula that combines delta-9 and THCA—before harvest, and destroyed, deflowered, or shredded into biomass if the test finds more than 0.3%. 

But if farmers plan correctly, they can still send THCA-loaded hemp to market, said Asheville cannabis industry attorney Rod Kight. “It’s all about the timing and genetics,” Kight wrote in an email. Federal rules give growers up to 30 days between testing and harvest, enough time for THCA levels to change significantly. 

Once plants pass a total THC test, delta-9 becomes “the only metric that matters,” Kight wrote.   

Manufacturers, meanwhile, have found that they can use hemp to synthesize cannabinoids that mimic delta-9’s effects. The DEA has argued that lab-made compounds—including the popular delta-8 as well as novel synthetics like THCO—are illegal. 

But federal courts have disagreed, ruling that these compounds are derived from hemp and that the Farm Bill only addresses delta-9.

Many states responded by banning or restricting intoxicating hemp. North Carolina did not. In 2022, the General Assembly passed a one-page bill to “conform the [state’s] hemp laws with federal law.” Attempts at more restrictive regulations failed. 

By 2025, hemp-derived cannabinoids had become a $3.2 billion industry in North Carolina. It employed nearly 16,000 people, with nearly 2,200 retailers generating $1.8 billion in annual sales. Those numbers are likely undercounts, because the report didn’t include thousands of gas stations and convenience stores that sell hemp products. 

“Here we are in North Carolina, and we don’t have any marijuana reform. Yet there are dispensaries all over the state, selling the same thing they’re selling in dispensaries in other places,” said Rod Kight, an Asheville attorney who focuses on cannabis law. “In fact, we’re selling more, and often gummies and things with higher concentrations, because North Carolina doesn’t have much of a regulatory framework. 

“So the joke in the industry is that North Carolina is actually the best recreational cannabis state in the country.”

‘They Can’t Stop Vomiting’

The broad availability of unregulated products makes public health officials uneasy. 

“It’s been pretty frustrating because of the ease of access to the younger patients, their ability to go into a vape shop and buy it without any regulation, no age restrictions whatsoever, and with no knowledge of what’s actually in the products,” said Dr. Arthur Apolinario, a past president of the N.C. Medical Society and a family medicine physician in Sampson County. 

Apolinario said he also routinely sees patients who have tested positive for fentanyl but insist they’ve only used cannabis. 

“Here we are in North Carolina, and we don’t have any marijuana reform. Yet there are dispensaries all over the state, selling the same thing they’re selling in dispensaries in other places.”

Rod Kight, Asheville-based attorney

Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone said that people in his community assume that products are safe because they can buy them in stores, when in reality, there’s “no telling what anybody puts in it.” 

It’s not just that the products contain more THC than the law allows, he said. It’s also that manufacturers put “anything they want to in these packages, and the packaging is driven toward kids,” with bright colors and designs that resemble candy wrappers. Apolinario said that in his small-town practice, he sees about one teenager a month who has gone to the hospital after consuming cannabis. 

The state doesn’t track adverse events specifically tied to hemp, but officials have attempted to keep tabs on cannabis-related emergency department visits.     

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase, like over 1,000% for teens showing up in emergency departments with acute toxicity,” said Dr. Lawrence Greenblatt, state health director at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS).

The data the state relies on can be imprecise, but one measure shows a 969% increase in the rate of cannabis-related emergency visits by residents under age 18 between 2017 and 2025. Young adults aged 18 to 24 are even more likely to seek emergency treatment for a cannabis-related ailment than teenagers, state data show. 

Emergency Measures

The state doesn’t track adverse events related to hemp or even cannabis. Instead, it uses two statistical measures that monitor cannabis-related emergency department visits. They aren’t precise or designed for public health surveillance, but they’re the best options available. 

The most direct measure is labeled “Cannabis Consumption.” It searches for cannabis-related keywords in hospitals’ chief complaints and triage notes. If someone goes to the hospital with symptoms of psychosis or hyperemesis syndrome tied to a cannabis overdose, that counts. 

The second is a broader measure called “Cannabis v2.” It folds in the cases from the narrower category, along with a wider swath of cannabis-related diagnosis codes that might not be directly related to a patient’s hospital visit. For example, if a patient goes to the emergency department after falling and answers yes when the doctor asks if he’s recently consumed cannabis, the case might end up in Cannabis v2, whether or not the cannabis contributed to the fall.   

Both measures show that, among residents under 18, cannabis-related emergency visits have skyrocketed since 2017, the year before Congress legalized hemp. 

That year, 2.9 of every 100,000 minors had an emergency visit coded as being directly related to cannabis consumption. By 2025, that rate was 31—a 969% increase. The data from the broader category showed a similar, if less dramatic, pattern, with the rate rising from 84.5 in 2017 to 130.3 last year. 

Among adults, the rate for the narrower coding rose by an even steeper 1,308%, from 2.3 per 100,000 to 32.4. But it declined by about 28% under the broader category, from 511.2 visits to 370.7 last year.

Most teens end up at the hospital after consuming too many edibles while waiting for them to kick in, Greenblatt said. Younger kids are more likely to find their parents’ THC gummies and think they’re candies. N.C. Poison Control reported managing 1,122 cannabis cases in 2024, a 117% increase from 2020; more than 40% involved children under 13. 

Many patients arrive at the hospital complaining of psychiatric or gastrointestinal symptoms, according to state data. 

“Kids are ending up in the ER all the time, whether it be with psychosis or just a bad high, or they go psychotic because of the high,” Apolinario said. “Or they just get completely nauseated for hours, and they can’t stop vomiting, and they end up dehydrated.” (Apolinario was referring to a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome.) 

Greenblatt said that cannabis might be causing more mental health problems than in previous generations because “the amount of THC that people are consuming is up substantially.” Marijuana can have up to 10 times more THC than it did a few decades ago, but some legal hemp products are also remarkably potent, as part 1 of this series revealed. Lab tests conducted for The Assembly found that one gummy sold in Greensboro contained more than 171 milligrams of the powerful synthetic cannabinoid THCP, which several industry sources said could be dangerous. 

“North Carolina does not have any rules around the maximum amount you can put in a package,” Greenblatt said. 

High-potency cannabis has been linked to psychosis and schizophrenia, particularly among those with family histories. (THC appears to alter the brain’s dopamine systems.) A recent study of California teenagers found that users had roughly double the rate of bipolar and psychosis disorders as nonusers, as well as a 34% higher rate of depression and a 24% higher rate of anxiety diagnoses. 

That study should be taken with two grains of salt, however: Less than 1% of the people it sampled were diagnosed with bipolar or a psychotic disorder, and only 16% and 13% developed anxiety and depression, respectively. It’s also well-established that people prone to mental illness are more likely to self-medicate through heavy cannabis consumption.  

Brauns, the CBHD vice chair, said the hemp industry isn’t to blame for these health concerns. 

“What we found is that a vast majority of these quote-unquote ‘cannabinoidal overdoses’ are actually marijuana overdoses,” he said. “These are illegal products brought into the state. They don’t even exist here for sale.” 

Brauns said an internal study CBHD commissioned found that, in North Carolina in 2025, 141 children suffered hemp-related overdoses. He said that in 98% of those cases, parents had left their edibles unattended or accessible. 

“What we found is that a vast majority of these quote-unquote ‘cannabinoidal overdoses’ are actually marijuana overdoses.”

Dustin Brauns, Cultivating Breakthroughs in Healthy Development

“It wasn’t that they were sold to these children,” Brauns said. “What it boils down to is parents who are incapable of common sense. So this farce idea that there’s all these kids getting into these products because of us as manufacturers is something that’s been used to demonize us.”

CBHD did not provide The Assembly with the study, and a DHHS spokesperson declined to comment on data the agency has not seen. 

‘Oh My Gosh, It’s Weed’

The McDowell County Sheriff’s Office never accused James Hurlston and Joseph Baker of selling hemp products to children or making anyone ill. Court records don’t specify what sparked the investigation into Ratoon Agroprocessing, which culminated in a November 14, 2025, raid of their shop in Marion, about a half-hour’s drive east of Asheville.  

Baker and Hurlston—an organic chemist and a pharmaceutical salesman, respectively—opened Ratoon in 2020, and for the first five years, the cops left them alone. Ratoon started as a processing facility, turning raw hemp into CBD distillate. But collapsing prices from an oversupply of hemp and the arrival of massive processing plants soon made that untenable.

They branched out into CBD tinctures and topical products, and eventually delta-8 THC, the first hemp-derived intoxicant to hit the market. Studies indicated that it also had therapeutic value. But they hit another snag. 

Synthesizing delta-8 from CBD involves solvents and acids that can pose health risks if handled incorrectly. Baker and Hurlston knew how to do it, but they were competing against amateurs with degrees from YouTube University.  

“The issue with delta-8 is that there’s no entry barrier,” Hurlston said. “You had a lot of people entering this market because, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s weed. It’s super exciting. We’ll make a lot of money.’ So you have a lot of products out there that are not made appropriately, and therefore, you start seeing more side effects.” 

In response, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) declared delta-8 illegal in 2021. Many hemp manufacturers ignored the DEA, but Ratoon stopped making the compound. Its monthly revenue plummeted from $70,000 to $10,000, Hurlston said.

They restarted three months later, bolstered by legal arguments from Kight and others that were eventually embraced by federal courts. By then, though, they’d lost market share they couldn’t recover. 

So in September 2024, just before Hurricane Helene ravaged Western North Carolina, Ratoon became a retail operation. They offered tinctures, topicals, and gummies but avoided THC drinks (the surfactants that make delta-9 soluble have “a lot of unhealthy shit,” Hurlston said) and synthetic cannabinoids (Baker said he worries that THCP could interfere with the brain’s “cleanup mechanism that happens during sleep,” and chronic use might cause a “proto-Alzheimer’s-type state”). 

They also sold THCA flower. Hurlston said they were wary of the compound when it first emerged in 2022, thinking it was too close to marijuana, as THCA converts to delta-9 when heated. But by 2024, THCA products inundated the region’s convenience stores, and many contained mold and mildew, Hurlston said.   

“I’m like, if the cops are allowing all these places to sell this stuff, let’s sell some stuff that is real,” he said. “Not real marijuana, but it’s handled properly, grown and tested properly, not covered in mold and mildew.”

Their flower was a hit. “We started taking a lot of business,” Hurlston said. 

‘Every Reason to Believe’

The McDowell County Sheriff’s Office noticed.

Twice in September 2025, undercover officers purchased a “green, leafy substance” from Ratoon, Detective Lt. Richard Pittman said in a November 13 search warrant application. The samples were sent to a Durham lab, which reported that they had more than 0.3% delta-9, Pittman said. 

That was enough for a judge to greenlight the search, which involved not just the sheriff’s office but also N.C. State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) agents.   

Deputies pulled Hurlston over on his way to work the next morning. They searched his car, arrested him for possessing a concealed pistol and prerolled joints—both misdemeanors—and confiscated his 2021 Toyota minivan. 

At about the same time, deputies and SBI agents raided Ratoon, seizing cash, hemp products, computers, and laboratory equipment that Baker and Hurlston used for contract research work. They also took a bowl of sugar and some markers, Hurlston said.  

Pittman sent 50 items to a lab in Texas, which tested them with gas chromatography, a controversial method that converts THCA (and sometimes CBD) into delta-9, which critics say can render legal products illegal. The tests determined that 31 of the items had too much delta-9. But Ratoon had certificates of analysis that said those products were legal. 

The N.C. Court of Appeals has ruled that, to violate state law, a defendant must know a substance is illegal. “They had every reason to believe that what they were doing was entirely legal,” Hurlston’s attorney, Ben Scales, argued in a court filing. 

No criminal charges came from the raid, and prosecutors dropped Hurlston’s case in March. But that wasn’t the end of it. 

Scales said the sheriff’s office held on to Ratoon’s products and equipment—and Hurlston’s minivan—until April without giving the company a chance to contest the seizure. Not only that, but immediately after the raid, the N.C. Department of Revenue assessed Hurlston almost $21,500 in unauthorized substance taxes, a rarely collected state levy on sales of illegal products such as marijuana, cocaine, and moonshine. 

“I’m like, if the cops are allowing all these places to sell this stuff, let’s sell some stuff that is real, not covered in mold and mildew.”

James Hurlston, Ratoon Agroprocessing

The taxes were designed to penalize drug dealers. But a review of court records indicates that the N.C. Department of Revenue regularly imposes unauthorized substance taxes on hemp retailers after police seize products containing what they claim are illegal concentrations of delta-9, even in the absence of criminal charges. 

Separate from the sales taxes that all retailers pay, these assessments can sometimes reach seven figures—the state charges $3.50 per gram of marijuana—though some are settled for lesser amounts or dismissed.  

Hurlston said that two days after his arrest, he discovered that Ratoon’s bank account had been drained. So had Baker’s personal account. So had an account Hurlston shared with his wife. (The warrant application erroneously said his wife was a clerk, though she said she hadn’t set foot in the store since 2024, according to a court filing.) 

“Lots of overdraft fees and late payments that month,” Hurlston said. 

In late April, the revenue department dropped its claim, citing “additional information,” according to a letter Hurlston shared with The Assembly. By then, he and Baker had scraped by for almost six months on contract work and recent inheritances. 

“Fortunately and unfortunately, both Joe and I lost our fathers last year, and they both left us some money,” Hurlston said. “And if it wasn’t for that money, I would have lost everything.”  

Hurlston said Ratoon plans to reopen in Asheville this summer. 

McDowell County Sheriff Ricky Buchanan and District Attorney Ted Bell did not respond to requests for comment.  

‘Specifically Deceived’

Like most stores swept up in what the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office called “Operation Vapor Trail,” the minimart on Burgaw Highway is owned by a man of Middle Eastern descent. T—who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that he not be identified by his full name—was born in Yemen in the early 1980s, though he’s lived in North Carolina for 30 years, he said.  

His parents owned convenience stores in Fayetteville, and he opened a gas station in Pender County in 2017. He was used to dealing with N.C. Alcohol Law Enforcement agents. When competitors began selling hemp products, he asked an agent if they were legal. “He said, ‘We hate this stuff. But unfortunately, it is legal. You can sell it.’” 

Urine Trouble

One of the hemp industry’s most consequential court rulings originated from an inauspicious North Carolina employment discrimination lawsuit. 

In 2021, Guilford County resident Tonya Anderson sued her employer of four months, Diamondback Investment Group, after she was fired for failing two drug tests. Anderson denied consuming marijuana but said that, on her doctor’s advice, she took hemp-derived products for anxiety and chronic pain. Anderson argued that Diamondback had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as a state law that says companies can’t ban employees from using legal products. 

A federal judge rejected her claims, and in 2024 so did a unanimous panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges ruled that Anderson hadn’t proven that the products she used were legal. 

More interesting to the hemp industry was what the judges said about Diamondback’s argument, that because Anderson admitted to taking THCO—which the DEA had deemed an illegal synthetic—she couldn’t say she’d only taken legal hemp. 

Two of the panel’s three judges said the DEA got the law wrong. Building off a 2022 ruling from the 9th Circuit in California, the judges wrote that the Farm Bill applies to all products derived from hemp, regardless of how they’re manufactured. And thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court curtailing federal agencies’ powers, they said courts no longer need to consider the DEA’s opinion.

The DEA hasn’t dropped the issue. In May, the agency classified HHC, another hemp-derived synthetic cannabinoid, as illegal. Hemp companies quickly challenged the rule in federal court. Even if they succeed, HHC and other synthetic cannabinoids—delta-8, delta-6, THCO, THCP—will be banned by the federal law that is set to take effect in November.

T did. But six months after he opened the minimart in October 2023, deputies showed up. 

T was home at the time and learned about the raid when an employee called. “The cops came here and raided us and took our products, our money. They broke the office door,” the employee told him. Deputies also unplugged his surveillance cameras, which he found suspicious. (The SBI investigated allegations that officers stole money from another store, a spokesperson confirmed. No charges were filed.) 

He and several other retailers were arrested in November 2024, after the sheriff’s office received lab test results indicating that some products deputies seized during the raids contained too much delta-9. T noticed that many of his fellow defendants looked like him. 

“It feels like they’re just targeting us,” he said. “But then again, the majority of the tobacco stores are Middle Eastern.” 

More than two years later, T has yet to be indicted. 

The Assembly identified 41 people who were arrested on felony charges in connection with Operation Vapor Trail. (The sheriff’s office did not provide a complete list by the time of publication.) Court records show that 23 of their cases are pending, including seven defendants who haven’t been indicted. Another case has been dismissed, and five defendants pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession and were sentenced to probation. At least five defendants have rejected plea deals. 

The Assembly could not locate case files for 12 individuals. Phil Dixon Jr., a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Government and an expert on cannabis law, said their cases might have been expunged after being dismissed or after they agreed to a conditional discharge. 

Ernest Lee, the district attorney for Onslow and three other counties, declined to comment for this article. 

The cases face several potential hurdles, some of which were brought to light in a federal lawsuit filed by Hubert Tobacco co-owner Muammer Saleh in December 2024. (Saleh died a month later, but his estate continued the suit.) 

Search warrant applications alleged that retailers circumvented delta-9 limits by selling products containing large amounts of THCA, which they claimed made the products “federally illegal.” That is incorrect. Federal statutes require that hemp plants be tested for “total THC”—a formula that includes THCA and delta-9—before harvest, but courts have ruled that this standard does not apply to products afterward.  

Floyd, the lieutenant who led the investigation, testified in his deposition that he believes that the legal threshold includes all forms of THC, not just delta-9 and THCA. He said he instructed officers to confiscate all loose flower and prerolls, as well as any product that contained more than one kind of THC, which he declared is “likely to be over the limit.” He also told Saleh’s attorney in 2024 that he believed that all flower, delta-8, and delta-9 products were “too close to the line.”   

“There’s no support for that in the law,” Dixon said. 

Both the state and federal governments’ definitions of hemp specifically include “all derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, [and] acids.” THCA is an acid. Delta-8 is both an isomer of delta-9 and a cannabinoid that occurs naturally in hemp in trace amounts.  

“It’s really hard to get around the plain language of the definition,” Dixon said. “Like, you can change the definition. Plenty of states have done that. But that’s not state law right now.”

Another issue: Detective Garrick Zimmer testified in his deposition that when he swore out an arrest warrant for Fawaz Saleh, Muammer’s brother and a Hubert Tobacco co-owner, on November 7, 2024, he believed that products seized from the store had “tested hot.” But the sheriff’s office hadn’t yet sent them to the lab. 

That didn’t happen for another month—after Muammer Saleh, who was not arrested, filed his lawsuit. Zimmer testified that if he’d known, he “would not have charged” Fawaz Saleh before getting the results back.

The plaintiffs have also disputed the scientific validity of the lab tests, which used gas chromatography. They have also argued that the eight months between the raid and the tests might have tainted the results. THCA rapidly converts to delta-9 when heated, but it gradually does so on its own if it’s not stored properly.   

Floyd’s deposition also undermined another crucial aspect of at least some cases. He testified that a warehouse in New Hanover County “specifically deceived” some Onslow shops about “bulk marijuana” that it purchased from out of state, repackaged as hemp, and sold to them. 

Asked how he could prove that store owners knew their products were illegal—as state law requires—Floyd answered, “I don’t know.”

Thomas, the Onslow County sheriff, did not respond to an interview request. 

T said he only bought products from North Carolina wholesalers, and all of them came with lab results saying they were legal. He doesn’t sell hemp anymore, though. “I’m scared to sell this stuff, because I don’t know what’s going on, if it’s legal or illegal,” he said. 

In his deposition, Floyd said that since the raids, the county has received fewer calls about children getting sick from hemp products. “And I haven’t read about any accidental overdoses related to the gummies and all that stuff,” he said. 

According to the Camp LeJeune spokesperson, the Marine who Floyd testified had died after taking hallucinogenic gummies and jumping off a building did so in November 2024—seven months after the raids.  

‘Dries Up What’s Down Here’

There aren’t good statewide data on hemp prosecutions, Dixon said. But anecdotally, the cases appear difficult to prove. 

The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office led raids on 26 smoke shops in April 2025, resulting in 26 arrests, mostly for felony possession. Court records show that three defendants pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession. Two cases were dismissed, and files couldn’t be located for the rest. (One store owner, who was arrested but has no criminal case file, paid a $312,000 tax assessment.) 

Scott, the Robeson County district attorney, opted for a different approach. In September 2024, he organized raids of 107 smoke shops in Robeson and Cumberland counties. (Somewhat confusingly, this was also called “Operation Vapor Trail.”) But instead of prosecuting store owners himself, Scott let federal authorities lead the investigation and decide who to charge. 

“I’m scared to sell this stuff, because I don’t know what’s going on, if it’s legal or illegal.”

T, convenience store owner

He said he knows how to handle marijuana cases. But hemp’s gray areas present complications. “From a law enforcement perspective, we don’t have the tools in our toolkit to address the problem that we see on a daily basis,” Scott said. 

Large-scale testing is prohibitively expensive, he said. There’s also enforcement. There aren’t enough state alcohol enforcement agents to also inspect thousands of convenience stores and vape shops, and many sheriff’s offices are already spread thin. The DEA, which was part of his task force, helped solve those problems. 

Federal prosecutors can do things their state counterparts don’t, Scott added. They can convene investigative grand juries. They can also lean on money laundering and organized crime statutes, and they don’t have to prove that sellers knew the product was illegal. 

It’s not clear how many cases federal prosecutors have brought. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina did not respond to requests for information. But federal prosecutors have indicated to people involved that they aren’t targeting hemp retailers, only wholesalers and distributors, according to state and federal sources.  

Scott pointed out that in January, federal prosecutors indicted a man in Houston, Texas, for selling the synthetic cannabinoid MDMB-4en-PINACA in vape juices that were shipped from Fayetteville. The Onslow operation also led to federal charges against an Oregon hemp supplier. 

The hope is that taking down big fish “dries up what’s down here,” Scott said. 

So did the raids change anything?

“No,” he admitted. “It’s still a work in progress, but these shops are still on every corner.”

‘Nothing Protecting Them’

Last fall, McConnell tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Citing a threat to children, the Kentucky senator tucked a last-minute provision into a government funding bill that will ban intoxicating hemp. The industry has set its sights on repealing or delaying the ban before it takes effect on November 12, so far to no avail. 

The federal ban won’t make hemp illegal under state law. But it will make doing business difficult, if not impossible. The industry believes that state regulations could help, said Morgan Davis, a Raleigh attorney who focuses on hemp law. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Anti-Commandeering Doctrine holds that Congress can’t intrude on state regulatory structures, so regulations might allow the industry to live on, even if it won’t be the same. (Part 3 of this series will explore how this could work.) 

“From a law enforcement perspective, we don’t have the tools in our toolkit to address the problem that we see on a daily basis.”

Matt Scott, Robeson County District Attorney

With time running out, hemp advocates have intensified their lobbying.  

Dixon pointed out that since 2015, Congress has forbidden taxpayer funds from being spent to enforce laws against medical marijuana in states that have legalized it. It’s possible that the provision could be extended to hemp. 

“I think that the industry’s view is like, it’ll be easier to convince the feds to leave us alone—whether that’s a formal policy or a budget restriction or just a gentleman’s agreement—but we need some rules in place so we can point to the feds and say, we’re not just letting this stuff go by willy-nilly,” Dixon said.  

While hemp businesses are looking to survive an oncoming storm, public health officials say that every day without regulations puts consumers at risk. With rules in place, said Greenblatt, the state health director, “the public health impact of cannabis would be much less widespread, particularly for kids who currently have nothing protecting them.” 

This article has been updated to add context to a quote from James Hurlston and to correct the year in which Lt. Jay Floyd corresponded with Muammer Saleh’s attorney.

Additional reporting by Tori Newby.