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Troy's Perspective: Is marijuana a gateway drug?

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Tuesday, 09 September 2025

Written by Troy Williams

Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, along with heroin and LSD, as "drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse" under federal law. Marijuana laws are rapidly changing across all 50 states. However, without a change in federal law, state laws create conflicts and negatively affect states with legalized cannabis programs, as federal law technically takes precedence over state law.
As of December 2022, North Carolina had the third-highest number of marijuana-related arrests in the United States. In 2023, there were a total of 10,909 marijuana-related arrests in the state. Most of these arrests were for possession, while the number of arrests for selling or manufacturing marijuana was significantly lower. Marijuana arrest numbers in the state have been decreasing; the 10,909 arrests are considerably lower than the 21,252 arrests recorded in 2018.
North Carolina Governor Josh Stein is in favor of regulating cannabis sales and is considering the potential legalization of cannabis for adults. Last June, he established a state advisory council to recommend a comprehensive policy on this issue.
President Trump's administration is potentially eliminating a significant barrier regarding marijuana classification. Recently, he confirmed that his administration is considering reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous substance. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump is weighing the option of moving marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug.
Schedule III drugs are classified as having a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. Examples include ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone. Reclassifying marijuana would enable more research into the drug and provide tax benefits for the cannabis industry.
I was a law enforcement officer for 6 ½ years, involved in the so-called war on drugs. In the early 1980s, school systems were struggling to address the issue of drugs in public schools. As a solution, they decided to place young law enforcement officers in high schools to conduct drug buys and subsequently arrest young drug dealers on campus. I was the undercover officer assigned to E.E. Smith, Reid Ross, and Hoke high schools. Marijuana was the drug of choice and was easily accessible, especially with schools providing smoking areas for students to use tobacco on campus.
After the school campaigns, I was appointed as a special federal marshal and began working on much larger cases. However, reflecting on my experiences, I will always regret my involvement in the high school campaign.
Although it was fair and conducted according to the law, more than 100 students learned a difficult lesson that adversely affected them for the rest of their lives. Marijuana is the drug in question, which is why I align myself with many former law enforcement officials who advocate for the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana.
Is marijuana a gateway drug? It might be, but the real gateway is tobacco use among ten-year-olds. Law enforcement opposes marijuana legalization due to the "smell doctrine," which permits warrantless searches when the odor of marijuana is detected. I hope that both Trump and Stein achieve success; it's time for a change.

Test scores show modest improvement

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Tuesday, 09 September 2025

Written by John Hood

Test scores are up for North Carolina’s public-school students — a welcome development, although the news isn’t all good.
On average, 55% of students in grades three or higher tested proficient on last year’s state exams. For the 2023-24 school year, that figure was 54.2%. In 2018-19, the last full academic year before COVID, it was 58.8%. We’re headed in the right direction, in other words, but not rapidly.
Most worrisome to me is that just 46.6% of third graders were proficient in reading, down two percentage points from 2023-24. North Carolina’s science of reading strategy is only now beginning to shape classroom instruction, but I’d hoped to see gains among our youngest readers.
Across all grades and subjects, the familiar gaps remain. On average, poor students (41.7% proficient) scored lower than the rest (68%). Asian (81.7%) and white (67.8%) students scored higher than Hispanic (43.2%), American Indian (42.8%), and black (39.2%) students. Girls (55.8%) slightly outperformed boys (54.3%).
When it comes to North Carolina’s post-pandemic recovery, I’m an all-hands-on-deck guy, not a proponent of just one or two strategies at the expense of others. Science-based reforms of how we teach reading and math? Higher starting salaries for teachers, plus significant pay boosts for proven effectiveness and advanced teaching roles? Better preparation and performance incentives for principals? Firmer classroom discipline and a crackdown on chronic absenteeism? More choice and competition?
Check, check, check, check, and check.
I know I can sound like a broken record on this matter, but North Carolina policymakers and activists should resist the temptation to cram every new event or data download into their preexisting political frames. We’d all benefit from adopting a broader perspective instead of endlessly relitigating (figuratively and literally) the past couple of decades of North Carolina trends and reforms.
Which states have the high-performing schools? Notice I didn’t say the highest-performing students. Many factors influence test scores, completion rates, college or career success, and other measures of educational outcomes. When evaluating the value added by teachers, administrators, curriculum, and other elements of the school experience, one must attempt to adjust for student background and other non-school factors.
As far as I know, the best-available measures come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which administers reading and math tests every couple of years to samples of fourth- and eighth-graders in every state.
According to an Urban Institute analysis of NAEP exams administered in 2024, Mississippi had the highest average scores in the country after adjusting for student background. Here are the rest of the top-10 states, in order: Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, Indiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois, and Kentucky.
And here are the bottom-10 states in adjusted NAEP scores: Michigan, Missouri, Arizona, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, Delaware, West Virginia, Alaska, and Oregon.
If you think the primary driver of school quality is expenditure, then you aren’t surprised to see high-spending Massachusetts and Illinois in the top 10. But low-spending Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana also ranking high — and very-high-spending Vermont ranking low — might well puzzle you. And if you think it’s all about choice programs putting pressure on school districts to step up their games, then public-school standouts Louisiana, Indiana, and Florida ought to warm your heart. All get an A or B-plus on the American Legislative Exchange Council’s latest Index of Educational Freedom. But so do Arizona and West Virginia.
Most scholarly research on the subject shows boosts in academic performance from both educational freedom and prudent government spending on high-quality programs and teachers in public schools. Indeed, robust competition from charter, private, and home schools makes district schools more effective. Now that legislators in North Carolina and elsewhere have enacted broadly available school-choice options, they can and should focus on reforming how public school educators are trained, deployed, evaluated, and compensated.
By now it should be obvious that choice and competition here to stay — and that school districts will continue to educate most students. Let’s all accept reality and get cracking.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Losing our grandchildren before finding them again

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Tuesday, 09 September 2025

Written by D.G. Martin

In some North Carolina houses, this is a time of empty rooms and empty spaces. Children, so long ever-present, are now suddenly gone away to college.
Even though they knew the day was coming, there was great emptiness in their homes and in their hearts. This is true especially for parents, but also for grandparents, even though they all knew that the day was coming.
One of my grandsons is in college, far from home in Colorado. And both my granddaughters just graduated from college far away-- one in Vermont and the other in Scotland. After some time at home, one is heading even further afield, to Alaska, and the other back to Scotland. These “grandbabies” are so far away that I will seldom see them.
My own children stayed reasonably close to home in North Carolina at Davidson and graduate school at UNC. Still, the break was painful.
How much more so when the distance is more than a long drive away?
Each year, I watch young parents bring their children to Chapel Hill.
So much is the same every year: Heavy trunks to carry up long stairways on the first day.
Waiting for them are professors — giants of teachers — whose love of scholarship and service is exceeded only by their commitment to the opening and nurturing of the minds of their students. Will they be worrying about the meaning of life, or something more important — like a broken date?
What makes taking or sending a child to college such a milestone for parents, such a passage? Is it the sudden freedom from the hour-to-hour worries of child rearing? No more waiting up past midnight — waiting and worrying. No more strain of daily negotiation for the use of cars, time of meals, attendance at church, volume of the music, or use of the bathroom.
Or is it the extra worry and uncertainty that comes with an absent child so far away in distance and independence?
Suddenly, the house is peaceful — and so empty. Gone is the daily joy of their companionship. Gone is the excitement of their new ideas. Gone is the richness and seasoning that their growing up brought to our lives, every day.
You wonder, “Does life have meaning without children to watch over?”
The answer is not certain.
But the question remains.
My grandchildren will live in the future, but the occasion draws me almost 100 years into the past when, in 1928, my father entered Davidson. When these men (it would be 50 years before women were allowed at Davidson) first came to college in the fall of 1928, they brought everything they needed in a suitcase or small trunk.
Things were different in the 1980s when my children entered college. Most students arrived in cars driven by their parents and loaded down with the students’ “things.” Former Davidson President John Kuykendall welcomed them with a short “freedom and responsibility” sermon to help explain what this business of leaving home for college is all about.
He reminded them that colleges and universities no longer pretend to take the place of parents or impose strict parental rules to dictate how the students will act. At 18, they must seek and find their own moral guides. And freedom means the freedom to fail.
Kuykendall would then talk about responsibility, explaining that free people have the responsibility to develop and accept rules if they are to live together in harmony and dignity. Our freedom to make choices makes us responsible for those choices. Freedom gives us the free choice to serve others. Freedom gives us the opportunity and the responsibility to search for the truth.
That quest brings us towards the goal of a college education: a liberated mind, a mind that never stops searching and never stops learning.
If our grandchildren’s college experience helps make them partners with us in a search for truth, then the pain of physical separation and giving them up to their own freedom can bring us together in a way that gives our lives rich new meaning.

We need to ask ourselves: Where does our garbage go?

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Tuesday, 02 September 2025

Written by D.G. Martin

Where does our garbage go? After you take it out of your house into your bin and roll it to the curb, the garbage truck comes to get it and rolls on out of your neighborhood. But then, where does it go?
My grandchildren, each in their own ways, were obsessed with all things garbage when they were little. They were always on high alert for the sound of the garbage truck’s arrival. We bought toy garbage trucks along with little, tiny rolling bins that amused them (and us!) for hours. Being a “garbage man” was the top career choice for one for a while.
They also had a book called “Where Does the Garbage Go?” The book read, “When the last layer of soil is spread on top of a landfill, grass and trees are planted on top of it. The landfill becomes a park or a playground.” There were drawings of a colorful playground, full of happy children. This cheery book, with wonderful intentions, showed a happy ending to a stinky pile of trash.
That book stuck with my granddaughter, and she recently wrote her college thesis on where, in fact, the garbage went for many years in Chapel Hill.
Spoiler alert: There is no happy playground on top of your local landfill if you live in Chapel Hill.
Some lucky communities that are next to a landfill might get a park in exchange. But in reality, being a landfill host community is much messier. Promises like parks are made to communities, and are often broken. Certain communities, usually those already burdened by poverty and racism, bear the burden again and again.
Here’s a little local history: For generations, the land near what are now Rogers and Eubanks roads in Chapel Hill was home to a historically Black community composed of farms and sawmills. The Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association’s website says, “It was beautiful land. The woods were untouched, the streams were full of fish, and there were all types of birds and wildlife.”
But in the 1970s, Chapel Hill needed a new landfill, and the town chose land in the Rogers Road community. The town government offered the community benefits to soften the weight of the landfill’s presence. At the time, it was unusual — almost unheard of — for communities to receive any sort of incentive for bearing the burden of environmental hazards.
In exchange for the landfill, the Rogers-Eubanks community would receive water and sewer hookups, taking them off well water and septic. It was a clear recognition that there was the potential for water pollution.
And there were other promises -- of paving roads and installing sidewalks. After 20 years, the landfill would be closed and a new site would be found. And indeed, on top of the landfill would be a park. At the heart of this agreement was Mayor Howard Lee, Chapel Hill’s first Black mayor and the first Black mayor of a majority-white Southern city since Reconstruction.
Mayor Lee knew the burden of the landfill would impact the community. Knowing this, he made a deliberate effort to engage with residents.
Despite Mayor Lee's good intentions and engagement, the repercussions came fast and hard. Trucks rolled through daily, and smells filled the air and homes. The tap water ran brown, laced with unsafe bacteria. Pests roamed the streets scavenging trash. Community members became sick.
Residents protested, but to no avail. In the 1990s, the landfill was expanded further into the community.
Then, after more than four decades — 42 years of bearing the unseen and too often ignored costs — the community won a rare and hard-earned victory. The landfill was closed in 2013. The town funded a community center, which is a vital hub for the neighborhood.
But problems plague the community. Many homes are still not connected to the water and sewer lines. Some residents bathe in contaminated well water and purchase bottled water for drinking and cooking. The promise of sidewalks was not fulfilled by the town of Chapel Hill. And indeed, there is no park.
So where does our garbage go these days? Now our garbage travels an hour and a half to Sampson County. And just like Rogers Road, it sits next to a historically Black community, already burdened by hog and poultry farms. This community was told the landfill would not grow, but what started as a 20-acre landfill is now over 1,000. Different place, same story.
Across the South and the nation, familiar patterns repeat: land once home to communities long pushed aside is now used for landfills, industry, or other unwelcome uses—too often without residents’ say.
We’ve got to come to terms with the fact that solutions are rarely simple. They’re almost never wrapped up in bright colors or easy endings, like those cheerful garbage trucks and parks on top of landfills in my grandkids’ book might suggest. The real work of solving problems isn’t neat or easy. It’s messy. It’s complicated. And it demands more than good intentions.
When we go looking for solutions—whether it’s in government, education, or how we deal with our stinky, dangerous trash—we can’t just ask, “What’s the fix?” We’ve got to ask, “Who’s being affected?” and just as importantly, “Are they being heard?”