Oklahoma law enforcement offers hard lessons as NC weighs cannabis legalization recommendations

Lt. Col. Mitch Smith with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs says there have been many unintended consequences in the eight years since the Sooner state voted to legalize medical marijuana.  Smith, director of the bureau’s marijuana enforcement unit, said North Carolina should take those lessons to heart as it prepares final recommendations on a comprehensive cannabis policy.

Smith told members of the North Carolina Advisory Council on Cannabis’s public safety subcommittee Thursday that Oklahoma law required 75% of the ownership of any medical marijuana business to be held by an Oklahoma resident.

“What we found early on is that folks from out of state moving in would find local Oklahoma residents that would take any sum of money to be straw owners of a business,” Smith said. “It was the bad actors or foreign nationals that were actually operating the business itself.”

By 2021, Oklahoma had 8,400 commercial growers with no cap on how much could be grown.

“You could potentially grow an infinite amount of marijuana plants,” said Smith. “That led to an abundance and overproduction of marijuana, which was destined for the black market.”

Oklahoma also did not place a limit on the number of medical cannabis business licenses. The lack of restrictions in the early years did not go unnoticed.

“We’ve been inundated with individuals from foreign countries that come here to profit off that,” Smith said.

He told the committee his organization is aware of 27 different groups from at least 16 different countries that are operating illegally in Oklahoma.

Agents have been forced to deal with abandoned grow houses, large quantities of trash and banned pesticides that could taint well water and pose a public health hazard.

“There’s no recourse for that,” Smith said. “My fear is the state’s going to end up footing that bill, to get those things cleared up, cleaned up, to get back to its natural state.”

Smith said Oklahoma allocates about $10 million annually for 48 agents and analysts assigned to marijuana enforcement.

“What’s your evidence storage looking like?” asked Scottie Shoaf with North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement.

Smith said his agents last week seized more than 50,000 illegal plants, which the state is allowed to destroy, logging small samples into evidence. But additional storage is needed for vape products, cannabis consumables, black market items and seized cash.

The court system was also ill-prepared for an influx of foreign nationals who didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand the drug charges they were facing.

“Interpreters who speak Mandarin and Cantonese — there’s not very many of those in the state of Oklahoma,” Smith said. “There weren’t budgets set aside for those. And then we’d have jury trials and the jury instructions [in those languages] didn’t exist. They had to create them.”

North Carolina cannabis council considers public consumption policy for THC products

Rosanna Smart, co-director of the nonpartisan RAND Drug Policy Research Center, told the public safety subcommittee that North Carolina may find that it spends more money on cannabis enforcement in the first few years after the passage of legalization.

But research shows that legalization can make a major dent in the existing illegal market.

“Studies show people are willing to pay higher prices in the legal market, if they believe the legal products are of high quality and come with accurate lab testing,” Smart said.

Smart cautioned that much of the available research is based on early adopters of legalized cannabis, not states like North Carolina where cannabis is illegal, but intoxicating hemp products are widely available.

Smith told the subcommittee if he could make one recommendation, it would be for North Carolina to make its licensing as restrictive as possible.

“We have spent the majority of our time over the last six years trying to put the worms back in the can,” Smith said.

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, the full N.C. Advisory Council on Cannabis holds what is expected to be its last meeting before delivering final policy recommendations to Gov. Josh Stein in December. The General Assembly would need to agree on the legislation. House Speaker-elect Robert Reives, D-Chatham, said this week Democrats, who will have a majority in the state House in 2027, are interested in exploring marijuana decriminalization.