Cannabis in the Triad — Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point

Last verified: April 2026

The Triad at a Glance

Reynolds, Camel, and Winston-Salem

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, founded by Richard Joshua Reynolds in 1875 in Winston-Salem, introduced the Camel cigarette brand in 1913 and captured roughly 43% of the U.S. cigarette market by 1925. Reynolds became a subsidiary of British American Tobacco in a $49.4 billion transaction completed in 2017. The corporate footprint — the historic Reynolds Building, the Innovation Quarter redevelopment of former tobacco facilities, and the broader Forsyth County manufacturing base — remains the visible center of NC tobacco history.

The hemp parallel runs through the same corporate-and-agricultural infrastructure. Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem operates a hemp beverage line that, by some reporting, accounts for over 20% of the brewery’s revenue. Other Triad-region hemp activity touches Reynolds American’s broader corporate diversification under BAT. For the deeper corporate-history page, see Reynolds, Duke & Liggett.

NC A&T and the HBCU Hemp Program

North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro is the largest HBCU in the United States by enrollment. NC A&T’s Industrial Hemp Program — led by Dr. Guochen Yang — was funded in part by the Golden LEAF Foundation (the entity that distributes NC’s 1998 Master Settlement Agreement tobacco dollars to farmer-transition projects). Dr. Yang served as an original commissioner on the NC Industrial Hemp Commission alongside NCSU’s Tom Melton and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.

The HBCU framing matters because NC has 11 HBCUs — second-most of any state — and because 61% of NC cannabis convictions statewide are nonwhite. NC A&T’s program is one of the few federally recognized HBCU agricultural research efforts on industrial hemp. Bennett College in Greensboro and Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem are also HBCUs in the Triad. For the broader equity dimension, see NC cannabis & racial equity.

Wake Forest, NC Central’s Sister Cities, and Medical Research

Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem is one of NC’s major research universities; Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is the area’s anchor academic medical center. Wake Forest was named one of four physician-recommender institutions in NC’s 2014 Epilepsy Alternative Treatment Act (alongside UNC, Duke, and ECU). For the legal-program detail, see NC patients in waiting.

Greensboro, the Civil Rights Movement, and Cannabis Policy

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum at the historic Woolworth’s lunch-counter site in Greensboro anchors the Civil Rights Movement’s sit-in legacy. The civil-rights register matters for cannabis policy because of NC’s 61%-nonwhite conviction statistic and because the 2020 NC Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice (TREC) report — commissioned in the wake of the 2020 racial-justice protests — explicitly recommended cannabis decriminalization, expungement, and felony-threshold reform. None of TREC’s recommendations have been enacted by the General Assembly.

Local Enforcement

The Triad spans multiple prosecutorial districts — Guilford, Forsyth, Randolph, Davidson, Rockingham, and others. There is no Triad-wide declination policy comparable to Durham’s. Possession penalties under N.C.G.S. § 90-95(d)(4) apply uniformly: 0.5 oz or less is a Class 3 misdemeanor; 0.5–1.5 oz is Class 1 misdemeanor; over 1.5 oz is a Class I felony. Marijuana paraphernalia under § 90-113.22A remains a fully arrestable Class 3 misdemeanor.

Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem and Piedmont Triad International in Greensboro both sit in federal jurisdiction. As elsewhere in NC, do not fly with cannabis or intoxicating hemp products. For the broader county comparison, see NC local enforcement.

Hemp Retail Across the Triad

Hemp retail is widespread across Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point — dedicated hemp dispensaries, vape shops, smoke shops, and gas-station retail all carry Delta-8, Delta-9, and THCA products meeting the NC hemp definition (≤0.3% delta-9 THC dry weight). Foothills Brewing’s hemp beverages are the most visible craft-beverage hemp product in the metro. Federal P.L. 119-37 takes effect November 12, 2026 and is expected to remove most current hemp-derived intoxicating products from legal sale; see the federal hemp cliff.

Practical Tips for Visitors

The 2020 Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice recommended decriminalization of marijuana possession up to 1.5 ounces, study of legalization, downgrade of felony thresholds, and automatic expungement.

NC Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice (TREC), Final Report, December 2020

NC Resources