NC Cannabis & Racial Equity

Last verified: April 2026

The 2019 Disparity Numbers

The most-cited NC cannabis-equity statistic comes from the NC Department of Justice TREC working-group memo, dated November 4, 2020:

• 31,287 misdemeanor cannabis-possession charges in NC in 2019.
• 8,520 convictions.
• 61% of those convictions were nonwhite.

For comparison, NC’s Black population is approximately 22% and its Hispanic population approximately 10%. The conviction-share figure is the headline disparity.

31,287 misdemeanor cannabis-possession charges in NC in 2019; 8,520 convictions, 61% nonwhite — in a state whose Black population is approximately 22%.

NCDOJ TREC working-group memo, November 4, 2020

The TREC Task Force

Gov. Roy Cooper established the NC Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice (TREC) by Executive Order No. 145 in June 2020. Co-chairs:

• Josh Stein, then Attorney General (now Governor).
• Justice Anita Earls, NC Supreme Court.

TREC delivered its recommendations on November 18, 2020. The cannabis-related recommendations were:

1. Decriminalize possession of up to 1.5 oz — reclassify as a civil infraction rather than a criminal offense.
2. Study legalization — examine the public-health, fiscal, and equity implications of broader reform.
3. Downgrade felony thresholds — raise the threshold above which possession becomes a felony beyond 1.5 oz.
4. Automatic expungement — for prior cannabis-possession convictions.

The General Assembly enacted none of the four recommendations. The current possession-tier framework under N.C.G.S. § 90-95(d)(4) remains as it stood pre-TREC; see NC possession penalties. Local prosecutorial discretion (Durham’s declination policy under DA Satana Deberry, Buncombe County’s deprioritization) is the only post-TREC change in NC cannabis enforcement — see decriminalization and local enforcement.

The HBCU Dimension

NC has 11 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — the second-most of any U.S. state, after Alabama. Notable institutions include:

• NC A&T State University (Greensboro) — the largest HBCU nationally; runs an Industrial Hemp Program with HBCU equity focus and Golden LEAF funding (see farm pivot).
• NC Central University (Durham) — the state’s public HBCU law school.
• Others including Fayetteville State, Winston-Salem State, Elizabeth City State, Bennett College, Shaw, Saint Augustine’s, Johnson C. Smith, Livingstone, and Barber-Scotia.

The HBCU footprint matters for the equity dimension of NC cannabis policy in two ways. First, NC A&T’s presence in the hemp research conversation gives the racial-equity argument an institutional anchor inside the state’s land-grant system, not just inside advocacy organizations. Second, the population-conviction disparity falls particularly heavily on the same demographic concentrations the HBCU system serves — sharpening the equity case for any future legalization or expungement framework.

Demographic Context

• NC total population: ~10.7 million.
• Black or African American (alone, non-Hispanic): ~22%.
• Hispanic or Latino: ~10%.
• Cannabis-conviction share that was nonwhite (2019): 61%.

The disparity is not unique to NC, and it tracks broader U.S. cannabis-enforcement patterns documented by the ACLU and others. What is distinctive in NC is that the structural disparity has been formally documented by an Attorney General’s task force and explicitly tied to recommended legislative reforms — none of which were enacted.

What Reform Would Do

Three of TREC’s four cannabis recommendations would have direct, measurable racial-equity effects:

• Decriminalization to 1.5 oz. The conviction floor for the largest possession category disappears.
• Felony-threshold reform. Larger volumes that currently trigger Class I felony exposure would become misdemeanors.
• Automatic expungement. Existing nonwhite-disproportionate convictions would no longer carry housing, employment, and licensing collateral consequences.

The Compassionate Care Act, by itself, would not address the existing conviction overhang — though some version of it has at times included expungement language. Adult-use legalization framings (HB 413 / S 350 in the 2025–26 session) typically pair retail policy with expungement.

The Connection Back to the Compassionate Care Fight

Racial-equity framing operates differently in the NC legislature from veteran-PTSD framing. The veteran case (see veterans & cannabis) has been the framing that has historically moved Republican legislators on medical cannabis. The racial-equity case has been the framing that anchors Democratic and CBC support for adult-use and for expungement — framings that have not made it past the “majority of the majority” constraint described on the Compassionate Care overview. Whether Gov. Stein’s NC Advisory Council on Cannabis (see 2026 outlook) integrates the two framings in its December 2026 final report is one of the open questions of the next year.

Official Sources

• NC Department of Justice
• NC Judicial Branch
• NC A&T State University
• ACLU — cannabis enforcement disparities