Sweeping changes to NC rules on drugs, labor strikes, drunk driving signed into law

Several brand-new crimes, as well as a sweeping array of harsher penalties for dozens of existing crimes, became law Wednesday with a few strokes of the pen from Gov. Josh Stein.

Stein signed four bills into law Wednesday morning: Two contain wide-ranging changes to the state’s criminal laws. A third changes various rules and regulations targeting pharmacies — particularly in rural parts of the state — and pharmacy benefit managers. And the fourth is aimed at helping military families, particularly those with young children, more smoothly transition into becoming North Carolina residents.

In an interview afterward Stein said he had concerns will several pieces of the wide-ranging bills, but that overall he felt they will do more good than bad for the state.

"I don't have a line-item veto, so I have to either sign the bill, allow it to become law, or veto it," Stein said. "And when the bill is predominantly good, but it has a couple problematic provisions, my view is I want to put it into law for the good. But I also want to highlight to the legislature where I think they made a bad policy decision, in the hopes that they revisit them. And I was talking to some of them after the bill signing about some of those ideas."

A number of Republican lawmakers, as well as a handful of Democrats who had also helped work on the new laws, flanked Stein for the bill signing ceremony along with pharmacists, soldiers, police officers and others who had advocated for the new changes.

The pharmaceutical changes in Senate Bill 479 passed unanimously in the state’s Republican-led legislature, on their way to the Democratic governor’s desk.

"There is not enough transparency and accountability when the price of medication increases," Stein said. "The bill protects community pharmacies from unfair business practices by pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, that make prescription drugs more expensive for you and me. It will help independent pharmacies promote access to healthcare in rural North Carolina. And critically, it will lower the amount paid by consumers at the pharmacy counter."

Stein also signed Senate Bill 118, which is aimed at helping military families who get deployed to North Carolina transition more easily as new residents. It's intended to smooth out the process for getting a driver's license, enrolling children in local public schools and other similar issues. Stein said he did have problems with a part of the bill that, in his view, opens the door for fraudsters to target military families looking for help with benefits. He urged the legislature to address that but said in general the bill, which passed the legislature unanimously, was a step in the right direction.

The two bills with vast criminal law changes were only slightly more controversial than the unanimous pharmacy and military bills, passing with broad bipartisan support.

One of them, Senate Bill 311, raises the possibility of fines or prison time for certain picketing activities. Any protesters — or workers on strike — who block roads or businesses would be targeted for ramped-up penalties. That provision drew some opposition from Democrats, but most still voted for the bill. It also includes a slew of other changes including harsher penalties for burglary, package theft, reckless driving and street racing, shoplifting and other offenses.

It passed unanimously in the state Senate and with only a handful of Democratic dissenters in the state House.

Stein said he had serious problems with the potential First Amendment violations implicated by the change targeting protests and labor strikes. But its provisions targeting "porch pirates," reckless drivers or those who assault utility workers, he said, help the bill outweigh the bad. Stein also brought Robeson County District Attorney Matt Scott to the governor's mansion to praise the bill. Scott said it balances compassion and reform with safety.

"This is a law and order bill," Scott said. "The substance of it protects our citizens. ... But there's one provision I do want to speak on, and that is, look: We all in our life, if we're honest with ourselves, made some mistakes. 'There by the grace of God goes me.' There's a provision in this bill that individuals who have committed a one-time, non-violent misdemeanor offense, it reduces the time for them from five to three years to get an expungement — and to go back and become a meaningful person and citizen of our great state."

The other, Senate Bill 429, makes it harder for people convicted of crimes to request what’s called a motion for appropriate relief — a key tool for people trying to prove they were wrongfully convicted.

That change comes after the state Senate also proposed, in its budget plan, the total elimination of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, which investigates claims of wrongful convictions.

Every Republican and most Democrats voted in favor of its changes as well; the conviction changes were only one of many pieces of the wide-ranging bill.

The new law also makes it easier for victims of crimes to apply for restitution, even long after the crime occurred, by giving people six months instead of just three days to apply. That money can help people pay for crime scene cleanups at their homes or businesses, funeral expenses, lost wages and more.

Elizabeth Watson, who leads the North Carolina Victims Assistance Network, singled out that provision in a speech at the bill signing ceremony. "Currently, victims only have 72 hours to file a report under the Crime Victims Compensation Act," she said. "When a person is a victim of crime, that's not nearly enough time. This bill extends the filing time to six months, allowing victim states to begin the process to begin to process the shock and trauma, without a looming deadline."

It also enacts stricter penalties for sex offenders and people convicted of secret peeping, it creates a new crime for exposing children to drugs as well as stricter penalties for fentany, and it repeals a decades-old crime that had made it illegal for people not to financially support their parents in times of need.

It also changes public records laws to make it harder to obtain certain autopsy reports and 911 call recordings. Stein said the autopsy provision in particular is "problematic" — critics fear it could make it harder for the public to discover accurate information about police shootings, among other issues — but in his view wasn't bad enough to force him to block all the other more positive changes in the bill.

"This bill will make it easier for certain victims of domestic violence to have their day in court and obtain a restraining order to keep themselves safe," Stein said. "It also makes clear that, just as other organizations, religious organizations can be held liable for sexual abuse by their agents."

But again highlighting his views that the bill contained good and bad provisions, Stein also focused on a different part of the bill related to fentanyl — an issue he previously made a top priority when he served as the state's attorney general from 2017 to 2024. Stein said the legislature was right to amp up penalties for drug dealers but wrong to amp up penalties for users.

"it continues the ongoing fight to get fentanyl off our streets by increasing penalties for selling fentanyl," Stein said. "I'm signing this bill because I believe it is critically important to do everything we can to hold dealers and traffickers accountable for pedaling this poison to our communities. However, I do have real concerns about the increase of criminal penalties for people who suffer from the disease of addiction, when the current sanction is already a felony. We cannot arrest our way out of this crisis."

The bill also contains a new provision to encourage first-time drunk driving offenders to install ignition interlocks in their vehicles in exchange for a lighter sentence. Those devices can prevent a driver from being able to start a car if they've been drinking.