From Tobacco Belt to Hemp Belt

Last verified: April 2026

Tobacco’s Long Reign

NC’s tobacco identity is uniquely deep:

• R.J. Reynolds (Winston-Salem) — founded 1875 by Richard Joshua Reynolds; introduced Camel cigarettes in 1913, capturing 43% of the U.S. market by 1925; became a subsidiary of British American Tobacco for $49.4 billion in 2017.
• American Tobacco Company (Durham) — James B. Duke’s company became the third-largest U.S. corporation by 1899, was broken up in 1911 under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and endowed Trinity College → Duke University.
• Liggett & Myers (Durham) — Chesterfield and L&M brands; long major NC employer.

NC was the #1 U.S. tobacco-producing state from the mid-19th century onward. See the Reynolds, Duke & Liggett page for the full corporate history.

The 1998 Master Settlement and the Slow Decline

The decline accelerated after the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (NC’s share roughly $4.6 billion over 25 years) and the 2004 Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act federal buyout. NC distributed MSA dollars through:

• Golden LEAF Foundation (1999) — long-term economic development for tobacco-dependent regions.
• NC Tobacco Trust Fund Commission (2000) — farmer transition assistance.

NC’s post-MSA programs uniquely focused on farmer transition rather than youth prevention — a 2007 American Journal of Public Health analysis (Jones et al., Wake Forest) made the contrast explicit.

NC distributed Master Settlement dollars through the Golden LEAF Foundation and the NC Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, prioritizing economic development and farmer transition over youth prevention programs.

Jones et al., American Journal of Public Health, 2007

The Hemp Peak: 2017–2019

NC enrolled in the federal 2014 Farm Bill hemp pilot via Senate Bill 313 (2015) / S.L. 2015-299, creating Article 50E of Chapter 106 and the NC Industrial Hemp Commission (expanded from 5 to 9 members by HB 992 in 2016). NCSU’s Tom Melton chaired; NC A&T’s Dr. Guochen Yang and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page were original commissioners.

The first growing season was 2017 with ~100 licensed growers. The pilot peaked in 2019:

• ~1,500 licensed growers
• 13,167 outdoor acres + 5 million sq ft of greenhouse
• ~1,200 registered processors

NC was the national leader in licensed hemp acreage and growers. Then the CBD market collapsed from oversupply, and U.S. cultivation dropped 90%+ by 2021. NCDA&CS announced August 16, 2021 that NC would not submit a state plan under the 2018 Farm Bill; cultivation regulation transferred to USDA. As of mid-2025, NC had roughly 858 USDA-licensed growers, ~400 processors, and ~144 hemp/CBD retail stores. Acreage cratered to 850 acres in 2024.

The Universities Carrying the Research Torch

NC’s land-grant universities anchor cannabis-adjacent research:

• NC State University — Dr. David Suchoff, Alternative Crops Extension Specialist, leads field trials at Cherry and Piedmont Research Stations and directs the FFAR Hemp Research Consortium with Cornell and Kentucky (April 2022).
• NC A&T State University — Industrial Hemp Program led by Dr. Guochen Yang, with an HBCU equity focus and Golden LEAF Foundation funding. NC has 11 HBCUs — second-most of any state — making the equity dimension particularly meaningful.

The NC State Extension Hemp Portal (hemp.ces.ncsu.edu) is the primary statewide resource. See the farm pivot page for the full research and company landscape.

The Corporate Pivot

The most symbolic NC tobacco-to-hemp story is Open Book Extracts in Roxboro (Person County): a 76,000 sq ft cGMP hemp processing facility in a former tobacco warehouse, founded 2017 by Dave Neundorfer and Oscar “Oz” Hackett. Other major NC hemp companies:

• Hempleton / The Hemp Farmacy (Wilmington, founded 2016 by Justin Hamilton)
• Founder’s Hemp (Asheboro, founded by Bob Crumley)
• Criticality LLC (Hobgood, Pyxus Agriculture USA)
• Abundant Labs (Canton)
• Broadway Hemp (Harnett County)

Industry advocacy runs through the Southeast Hemp Association (executive director Blake Butler of Asheville, also HempX co-founder) and the NC Healthy Alternatives Association.

The KY Bourbon-and-Hemp Comparison

The hemp parallel to Kentucky’s bourbon-and-hemp pivot is real but incomplete. KY scaled to ~1,000 licensed growers by 2019 with $17.75M paid for the 2018 harvest; NC peaked higher (1,500 growers, 13,167 acres in 2019) but was the first state to discontinue its state-run pilot when the CBD bubble burst. NC State’s Suchoff has explicitly resisted the parallel:

I don't think any crop will ever be what tobacco will be to North Carolina.

Dr. David Suchoff, NC State Alternative Crops Extension Specialist

NC’s tobacco corporates — specifically R.J. Reynolds, now a subsidiary of BAT — are the literal cannabis-adjacent pivot story Kentucky’s bourbon angle cannot match. The $49.4B BAT-RJR transaction puts a multinational cigarette giant at the center of NC’s cannabis future, whether or not it ever moves into recreational cannabis directly.

Pre-Prohibition Hemp in NC

Hemp’s NC roots stretch back to colonial-era cultivation as a naval store. John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina (1709) mentions hemp; Gov. Arthur Dobbs in 1760 asked the legislature for an export premium; in 1766 the General Assembly authorized two hemp inspection warehouses at Halifax and Campbellton (now Fayetteville) under Gov. William Tryon. Legal cultivation effectively ended after the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, with brief WWII “Hemp for Victory” production. NCpedia notes that in some remote NC mountain regions, “marijuana farming has largely replaced moonshining” as a cash crop.

Explore NC Heritage

Official Sources

• NC State Extension Hemp Portal
• Golden LEAF Foundation
• NC Tobacco Trust Fund Commission
• NC A&T College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences