- [Kelly] The first estimates of economic impact a medical marijuana industry may offer are released, local school boards want power over their school calendars returned, and the House makes its move to end local pistol purchase permits.

This is State Lines.

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[bright music] ♪ - Hello, again.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Welcome back to State Lines.

Joining us this week, Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation, political analyst for Black Issues Forum and a good friend of our station, Steve Rao, Lucille Sherman of Axios Raleigh, welcome to our show, Lucille, and WUNC Radio's Colin Campbell, new job, old hand here on the air.

Thank you, sir, for joining us.

- Glad to be here.

- And congratulations on joining the broadcast side of this media place.

- Thanks, I know the dark side of radio and TV.

- Well, guess what?

You get to ad lib on this program, and we're gonna talk about medical marijuana.

Just keeps moving.

We're watching that bill that would allow doctor-prescribed cannabis usage for certain patients.

It's moving because key Senate Republicans are backing it now.

State analysts are wrestling with the potential impact of a future medical marijuana industry that could come later this decade.

They report the state could collect $15 million, or close to it, in patient card application fees just in year one.

Then in year two, we'd see a 10% gross revenue tax applied.

That'd bring in extra $3 million and increase rapidly.

And by 2028, just those card fees, just the revenue taxes could generate $44.5 a year for North Carolina.

They're not even counting the licensing fees on all the labs, production facilities, suppliers.

And somebody out there will get caught doing something wrong and get a hefty fine.

Analysts say they cannot accurately assess that form of revenue yet.

Lucille, you're following this story.

It's a multi-week process, it's slow, it's deliberate, but what's the latest on the medical marijuana front?

- Yeah, it looks like the Senate, the full Senate will vote on the measure this coming week.

It's made its way through committee and the Senator that's sort of tasked with sponsoring it, he's a Republican, has sort of been pushing it through and introducing it this week.

The Senate probably won't make any changes to the bill on the floor, but then it has to go to the House, where there could be changes made or adjustments.

- Colin, legislators in Raleigh are famous in Raleigh and they're famous in their bubble, but you take Senator Bill Rabin out of Raleigh and North Carolinians don't really know Bill Rabin.

He's a veterinarian, nice seeming guy personally.

Who is he and is he powerful?

- Yeah, so he's the Senate Rules Chair.

So essentially you think of him as the second most powerful person in the Senate.

- [Kelly] It's his bill.

- Yeah, it's his bill, so he's sponsoring it, so he can get it to the to the floor.

And Senator Berger, the Senate Leader, the number one person in the Senate, told me this week that he expects that'll get a floor vote probably Tuesday and Wednesday of this coming week.

So it kind of feels like a done deal in the Senate.

Where things get a little bit dicey is on the House side.

Last year, if you remember, the Senate voted for medical marijuana.

The House never took up the bill.

And when I talked to House Speaker Tim Moore this week, he said, actually, there's been a lot of warming to the idea of marijuana in the House and he thinks it's got a better shot this year than it did last year to get enough Republican support in the House to make it to a floor vote and maybe to the Governor's desk.

- Mitch, is this the year Representative Kelly Alexander of Mecklenburg County finally gets a marijuana bill of some sort legalized and gets that camel's nose under the proverbial tent?

- With his 420 caucus.

They'll celebrate in some way, I'm sure, if they do.

It could be.

To me, one of the most interesting things about this story is that you're seeing the particular legislation that's on the table being attacked to some extent on both sides of the argument.

For folks who are concerned about legalizing marijuana at all, you already mentioned the phrase "the camel's nose under the tent."

If you bring in the medical marijuana, the industry will start coming in and it will push to have eventually legalization of all marijuana, so that's the concern for some people.

On the other side, the people who are really the most staunch advocates for this are saying this bill is too restrictive.

It would keep out too many people from being able to participate in this.

The rules are too extensive about what types of things could be covered, and they would like to see something that would be much more liberal in allowing medical marijuana.

- Steve, I've heard Senator Rabin in the committee and he says this is gonna be an industry if it's passed and only the well-funded, whatever that means, agricultural interest can be part of.

We don't need to let people experiment and lose their fortunes in their small family farms trying to grow marijuana and failing.

At that level, what do you think of that, as if it comes in it needs to be big business, not small business?

- Well, I think it could... Yeah, that's a great point.

I do see opportunities with startups, small businesses.

Former Governor Garrett Perdue actually started a cannabis-related company called Root Bioscience.

I don't know if they're still around.

Raised a few million dollars.

So I think when we look at North Carolina and new industries, we don't want to hurt farming, but think about how many new jobs we could create.

For every startup that we create, we create six jobs in North Carolina.

So if a business could benefit from bringing the benefits of medical-related marijuana, I think great opportunity.

- Lucille, last week we heard from people wanting chronic pain relief.

It was a health-emotional play and we need to feel better, medicine doesn't work, or we were scared of opioids.

Now it's cash.

Does cash talk more than our feelings and what we want for pain relief?

- I'm not sure that it does.

The thing that's been really interesting for me this week is I've sort of moved on to focusing on where the House is at, as this bill has pretty good chances in the Senate, and I've watched sort of what I think is House members warming up to the idea.

I'm told that that's because they've just had a little bit of time to think about it, they've heard from more constituents, but I think a huge part of it is Senator Bill Rabin himself and his willingness to share his own story about how it could have helped him with a deadly battle with cancer, or near-deadly battle with cancer.

- 10 seconds, very quickly, what's there to warm up about?

This issue's old, it's mature, and these folks in Raleigh are elected to think about these things.

I don't get it.

- I think the challenge is realizing this is intending for people with severe chronic pain, maybe they're dying of cancer or something like that, as opposed to everybody who wants to smoke weed on the street can do so, and that's what other states, of course, are doing.

- There are many House bills filed to give local school boards the flexibility of choosing when to start the public school year.

These are called local bills.

Legislature passes them, but they affect maybe one area, not the whole state.

So many House members are now asking for some local school board flexibility.

It sparked a State House discussion, if nothing more, Mitch, just a discussion, on giving school boards back their freedom with their calendars.

- We're not making the school calendar longer.

It'll still be 180 days.

We're just given the flexibility to the school boards.

They don't have to change the dates.

If they want to change the dates, they can.

But they'll still only go the 180 days that the state law requires.

- This fits in with what I call a current attack on the family.

So instead of family time, and they'll have to take their kids out of school to get family time.

- Soundbites are pro and con on this show is what we do, but the vote's overwhelming.

That opinion didn't manifest itself in a House floor vote on some of these flexibility bills.

Why is this so hard to get passed?

And why is it such a dicey proposition in Raleigh?

But it seems to be popular to give school boards flexibility locally.

- People who are very new to the legislative process can get lost in a lot of the details.

What they really ought to know is that for a number of years now, almost every member of the North Carolina House of Representatives has been for giving local school systems more flexibility on the calendar.

On the other side, at the Senate, there has been less interest to that.

And most importantly, no interest in the idea from the Senate leader Phil Berger.

So because every two years you have a new general assembly, once the calendar reach December 31st, 2022, you'll wipe off the chalkboard and start over again.

So the House comes back, has this series of bills dealing with school calendar flexibility.

Some of them local, one of them to give statewide flexibility.

They didn't vote on that one, but they did have discussion about it.

And so you're gonna have the kabuki dance of the House having its votes.

And then the issue will go to the Senate, where unless something changes that we haven't seen yet, it's gonna die and you'll start it over again, probably in 2025.

- Well thanks for that uplifting report on the future of school flexibility.

Steve, you're at the local grassroots level.

What gives?

- Well, I think this is an interesting issue.

I mean, I can see benefits of different parts of the state benefiting from this.

If you're in the beach or military transition, families in Mooresville, we have a huge immigrant community, many from the nation of India, 47% of our population.

One thing is, getting out of school earlier could help them go see their grandparents and parents in India, a longer summer.

I think there's other policy considerations, though.

One concern would be, is it gonna affect the quality of education?

Would we, certain families are depending on childcare and free and reduced lunch.

Would getting out earlier in the year affect those families?

So I think there's a lot of policy considerations that go into this.

But it's interesting.

It keeps coming up every two years and then the Senate, just isn't in favor of it.

- And that's the way it goes.

As in, if the Senate is not in favor of it, it goes nowhere.

But Lucille, isn't the real issue here about how early we start our public schools in August and we're ruining "summer vacation"?

- Yes, totally.

And I think that, I'm not sure I'll be paying attention to the legislation unless Phil Berger changes his mind.

That's just sort of the thing that I'm watching on that.

- And it's funny, Colin, because if there's a reality to the politics of this, but legitimately, Representative Jackson's bill has 60, almost a super majority of primary sponsors to give some flexibility back.

I mean, people speak.

- Yeah, and I think this is sort of coastal versus everybody else.

So it's really, this is a tourism industry thing.

They really do not want school to start early because they rely on those high school students to be workers fueling the state's tourism industry into August.

And even potentially early September.

So when Union County tried to violate the law earlier this year, they fairly quickly backed down, realizing they didn't have a legal leg to stand on to move up the start day of the school year.

But then you see the sponsors of these bills, Frank Iler, who was in the clip that we saw, and Bill Rabon, the number two guy in the Senate, both from Brunswick County.

What is Brunswick County's biggest industry?

Tourism.

It's the beach.

- And one thing that's it's important to note is it's not just school calendar bills, but there are other bills that you see and you say, "Didn't they talk about this last year, a couple years ago?"

This is a case with the school calendar bills that are floating out there of one chamber has some priorities that the other chamber hasn't wanted.

They're getting the bills out there early because they know where they stand.

And now it'll all be a point of negotiations again.

- This smells like a business play.

It's an economic decision.

You back up the school year, I get it.

Families wanna travel earlier in the year or whatever.

But if you cost us tourism, that's millions, maybe billions of dollars.

- That's right.

I mean, I think that's one of the major issues driving this, you know, tourism getting folks to spend their money and the resources and I think it's, I could see the benefits of this.

I mean I think, COVID has taught us to be flexible, right?

The pandemic educational systems were forced to be flexible.

And the thing is, as long as decisions don't affect the quality of children's education, that's what most people are concerned about in North Carolina.

- All right, Colin, coming to you, where the State House followed the Senate and passed its version of a pistol purchase permit repeal this week.

How's that for a tongue twister?

The House proposal deletes all requirements that pistol buyers receive their purchase permit from their local sheriff.

Legal pistol purchases are still subject to the national background check, which has been upgraded with new information.

Many sheriffs in our state, but not all, believe the addition of mental health information to the federal system makes local permitting redundant.

Permit supporters though, say it's an extra layer of safety.

- As far as background checks, you're still required to have a background check in the state of North Carolina.

If I transfer a firearm to Representative Humphrey here, in a private transaction, we're still supposed to have a transaction of a background check.

So this does not change that effect.

It's still required by law.

I'm also pretty sure that criminals don't get background checks or pistol purchase permits or anything along those lines.

In fact, most criminals acquire their guns by breaking into cars and homes and stealing them.

- I live in the hot zone in Winston-Salem.

And for those of you who don't understand that, that is one of the highest crime districts in the city.

And so I'm just a little leery of us creating policy that is less effective for gun ownership.

And let me be real clear, I am pro gun ownership.

- The representative there, Colin, says she's in gun class to become a pistol owner going through the process.

So it's not an anti-gun play from her standpoint.

What is it about political discourse that repealing regulations can make people scared?

- You know, I think on the Democratic side, we've had all these mass shootings recently, including some in North Carolina, and there's the worry that anything, even if it may be it's a little bit redundant as a part of the permitting process to remove that as a step in the wrong direction.

And they feel like that's just one more taking away what existing gun control measures we have in the state.

From the Republican side, a lot of this is being fueled by backlogs, particularly, I mean, urban sheriff's offices.

You know, if an urban sheriff doesn't really wanna make the pistol permitting process a priority for them, and there's another tongue-twister for ya, they, you know, may have months of a waiting list to get the process.

And at one point I think Wake County actually temporarily stopped taking applications for permits 'cause they didn't have the staff to process them.

So from the Republican standpoint, this is just reducing your rights by making you wait a long time before you can go out and buy that pistol.

- Mitch, good bureaucracy can slow anything down to a crawl.

Was this a matter of urban sheriffs deciding to use bureaucracy, quote "lack of staffing and COVID-19," not to issue permits.

And the state Republicans at least are saying, all right, enough of that.

- I think there's some of that.

And over the years there have been other sheriffs who have used this process to stop people from getting pistol permits if they didn't want it.

You've heard a lot of discussion about the history of this law.

To me, one of the most interesting things about this debate was the two sides speaking past each other.

From the Democratic side, it was basically, look, why would you take something away when we're seeing these mass shootings and this is another safeguard?

Whereas on the Republican side, the main argument was, this is a fundamental US constitutional right.

And this permit doesn't provide anything beyond what this federal background check does.

Why would you have it in place to put another barrier on a fundamental constitutional right?

They were both making the arguments and neither side seemed to buy the other one.

- Lucille, you're shaking your head.

You've got some extra insight?

- Yeah, I totally agree.

I was thinking the same thing.

It was so interesting on the Senate floor last week and on the House floor this week, nobody was really listening to each other was my biggest takeaway too.

Everyone was talking past each other.

But the thing that I think is significant about this bill is the concern from Democrats that with private sellers, those people don't have to have a background check in all situations whenever they're selling a gun.

So they're worried that even though with most gun sales you have now, two steps, you'll have none with some private sales.

- Steve, at the local level, the elected sheriffs who are engaged in their communities know a whole lot about a whole lot of things that people don't realize, including people who shouldn't, maybe legally deserve a gun but commonsense says, oh, I don't know.

What do you make of taking power away from local elected officials?

- Yeah, I don't like it.

I mean, you know, I think the local governments in general across the state, if you look at the legal municipalities, there's always concerns about, you know, the legislature taking away control from our cities, like, you know, generating revenue, but in this case, it's safety.

I mean, you know, at the end of the day I have, like Representative Collins, many friends that are legal gun owners, and I believe every American has a right to purchase a gun.

The concern is there were 500 school shootings last year.

We had the shooting in Michigan State, in Hedingham and Raleigh.

What would hurt by having a local sheriff being able to make a decision of whether someone is mentally fit to own a gun?

I see that people at the local government level would feel safer.

I talk to many parents today, I'm gonna be an empty nester soon, but you know, it's scary when you've got young kids and you hear about these shootings.

What if that happened, you know, in my backyard, right in my own neighborhood?

So Kelly, I think that, you know, I don't like the fact of taking away local control.

- And another thing about this debate is you see the difference among the sheriffs.

There are some sheriffs who really take this as a serious thing, that they're going to look very carefully at who's going to get these permits.

Other sheriffs we heard during the debates about this are saying, look, I just go and do the federal background check, which they're gonna do anyway, and that I don't do anything past that.

So there's a wide divide.

The Sheriffs' Association is for this bill, but there are a number of local sheriffs, we heard from Democratic legislators, who were against it.

- Yeah.

- Steve, however, a local sheriff can also foot drag and not issue a permit to someone who's fully qualified to own a handgun.

What do you say to that point?

You've protected your family by saying they do keep guns out of harm's way.

But on the reverse side of that, legal gun owners should not be bottle-necked at the local level.

Should they, or is it fair to have delays?

- No, I think if you've gone through the permitting process and you feel like, you know, you're gonna use a gun, that's your right.

So I don't think the goal should be for people to, like, bottleneck or make it hard to purchase the gun.

I'm just saying that it's a hard balance, right?

How do you value the security and safety or the residents you serve, while at the same time respecting the freedoms and liberties that you have as an American citizen, right?

It's the battle of democracy but I think that that's why people are talking past each other, because it's hard to get people to agree on this issue.

- Colin, what happens when elected leaders stay on the floor and talk past each other?

They're not really debating, they're just talking to their team.

- Yeah, and this is one of those issues where there've been a lot of bills in the House this year, where you have a few moderate Democrats cross lines and vote with Republicans.

Didn't happen here, including Representative Michael Wray, a Democrat from Northampton County who actually co-sponsored the bill, and then decided, actually no, he's gonna vote against it.

So really, very few minds are changed in this kind of a partisan debate.

- Yeah, rights debates are so important.

Another one, some state senators now, are pushing for a, I guess a legislative, a law ban, on high risk online platforms and apps from being used on state-issued mobile phones and computers.

It appears a targeted app is social media platform, TikTok.

The federal government has mostly banned TikTok from federally-issued devices.

Governor Cooper issued an executive order in January that banned TikTok, WeChat, some other apps that might pose a cybersecurity risk, that they can't be installed or used on state-issued devices.

And Steve, you're very active in this high-tech space.

Your assessment of governments saying, hey, fun app, but look under the hood and they're spying on us.

I guess it's about spying?

- Well, I gotta tell ya, I think that this is one of the most critical issues facing our state, is cybersecurity.

I mean, you know.

Just, Governor Cooper, I think did the right thing by banning TikTok.

I know Secretary of Technology, Jim Weaver, cybersecurity is one of his top priorities.

And all it takes is a matter of seconds for someone to have an app that's not secure, and it could shut down the General Assembly, it could shut down state agencies, public safety.

And we, many years ago in our local government level, got hit with a ransomware attack, and it just took a matter of seconds and we couldn't even respond to emergency requests, fire.

So I think that it's fun to have nice apps but I think from a security perspective for the state of North Carolina, we have to make sure that we are doing everything we can, that state governments are secure, local governments are secure, counties are secure.

Very, very important.

- Lucille, and you're a digital journalist with Axios.

- [Lucille] Yeah.

- You're an app, well not really an app, but you send out newsletters.

What do you make of this?

And he's right, people have hacked into the government computers, but this is TikTok and apps and other things that I perceive to be on the phone.

Your take?

- Yeah, I think what's interesting about this is that it seems like a pretty bipartisan or a more bipartisan issue than some of the other bills that we've talked about.

And I think it's because people recognize that we're sort of moving to a very digital world.

We're already in a very digital world, and I think that has sort of brought people together on the issue.

- Colin.

- You know, it'll be interesting to see is the fallout of this, of whether this means that elected officials state agencies don't engage on TikTok as a platform the same way the other social media sites.

Certainly that's the popular platform for teenagers, young adults, and it's a way that you can reach them despite those securities concerns.

And I think with this legislation out there with the governor's executive order you're gonna see a lot of hesitance to even be on those sites at all to get out government information you know, elected officials, platforms, that sort of thing.

- Mitch, this is wide reaching a state platform, as anything it's state funded.

Well, there's wi-fis at schools.

There's things with young people using 'em.

They're not sharing state secrets.

And even if you hacked into the wi-fi you're not gonna find much except what the kids are doing.

What do you make of the breadth of such a proposed ban?

Executive order took care of a lot of it too.

- Yeah and a law would cover things that would go away if the executive order goes away.

So I think part of it is being redundant But to me, one of the most interesting parts of this discussion was the fact that we're talking about TikTok, but there were at least three different apps that were mentioned in the bill.

And the bill sponsor said, "We're trying to write this in such a way that we can easily go back and add others as other apps are seen as a security risk."

This is the type of thing where the people who are trying to get your information, they're smart.

They're smart enough to be computer programmers so they're smart enough to find a way to get past any laws that are on the books.

And so it's gonna be a case of whack-a-mole for the General Assembly as it goes forward.

- Yeah, and the buzzword in the tech industry is the Internet of things.

Smart cities, smart technologies.

So the challenge is the more devices we have the irony is the more vulnerable we are to security attacks because of the, you know, the amount of devices that are connected to the internet.

So we have to tread with caution here.

- Lucille, how does the government resist the temptation of having people declare Twitter a menace?

Or sometimes it's Facebook, sometimes it's Insta, sometimes it's Snap.

You know, the idea is we're gonna add more apps to it, which pretty soon you've taken out a lot of public discourse.

- Yeah, it's a slippery slope.

I was actually just thinking, DOT, NCDOT has a really fun Twitter account and is really great at engaging the public.

And if we can't, if those agencies aren't able to move over to where people are going, I wonder how that's gonna affect sort of state agency's ability to communicate with North Carolinians.

- All right, and Colin, is this done from a place of benevolence to protect our state infrastructure?

Do you think there's a real risk out there?

Are these apps somewhat dangerous in a way?

- I think the concern is out there and certainly IT experts have a better sense than I am.

But certainly this is a national push.

And so I think North Carolina leaders are sort of jumping on the bandwagon of what we're seeing at the federal level with these particular issues.

- All right.

Well, let's wrap up this week's show by learning what stories we may haven't discussed so far.

We should have caught them.

Maybe they flew under our radar.

The big one, Lucille, we'll come to you.

You broke a big story over Thursday night into Friday morning.

- Yeah, around 10:00 PM Thursday night, I received some information that House Speaker Tim Moore had been involved in a car accident.

I confirmed it with multiple people, and it sounds like what happened was a driver rammed into the vehicle that was carrying House Speaker Tim Moore multiple times.

He was charged with a DWI this morning, in addition to resisting a public officer.

So we'll be seeing more about that.

We don't really know the circumstances of the wreck other than that.

But we'll be keeping an eye on it.

- From your information, someone hit the speaker.

- Yes.

- Hit his vehicle and he's a victim of an accident that someone else caused.

- Correct, yes.

- Okay.

Steve, you just talked about Ukrainian immigrants in North Carolina and the Triangle.

- Right.

- You track immigration.

- Yeah well, we pray for Ukraine.

It's the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

And they're 21,000 Ukrainians in North Carolina, many in the Triangle.

Many of them are in science and research.

And I've spoken to a few that are actually from Dynapro, which is the rocket technology capital of the former Soviet Union.

So we want to just say that they're still affected.

In fact, a few of them said a year ago one of the students, Misha Sevitz, he's a professor there.

He said he couldn't even hear his parents on the phone because of the bombs going off.

So it just really brings it home in terms of how many families here in our region and the state are affected, and we pray for Ukraine.

- Colin, you've switched positions but you're still at the legislature.

Just to wrap up, how's the tone so far?

We've had some very controversial bills and Democrats are starting to feel that, "Oh yes, there's a Republican majority and they're starting to impose their will on us," after some good tithings, I would say, in mid-January.

- Yeah, it's really gotten a lot more partisan over there.

I mean, a lot of that's because you're seeing essentially what I call rerun bills.

These are bills that passed a couple years ago, got vetoed by the governor the Republicans didn't have the votes to override.

Now they're trying again with the few more votes on their side.

So we'll see how that plays out once it gets to the governor's desk.

- All right.

I wanna say thank you, Mitch, as always for being on the show this week.

Steve, welcome to "State Lines."

Great to have you on.

Good insight.

- Pleasure to be here, - Lucille, likewise.

Axios represented on, I hope you'll come back.

- Yeah, I hope so.

Will you have me back?

I hope so.

- Absolutely.

Invitation is standing.

Colin, always good to see you.

- Happy to be here.

- And it's great to see you as well.

Thanks to our panelists for their insights.

We appreciate that you watch "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

See you next time.

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