Weldon, NC — While twenty-nine U.S. states have passed measures to allow patients to decide how they’ll treat their various illnesses with cannabis, North Carolina is still celebrating marijuana possession charges.

Police officers in Weldon, NC arrested Derrick Jermaine Priest, 31, and charged him with possession of marijuana and paraphernalia, both misdemeanors in the state which recently decriminalized weed.

According to WRAL news, “Agents of the City County Drug Task Force and deputies of the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office seized a ‘Fruity Pebbles marijuana’ bar Tuesday during a traffic stop on a vehicle on Interstate 95 near Exit 173 for a motor vehicle violation.”

The cereal bar was made with cannabutter, an infusion of marijuana concentrate and good ole fashioned butter. Edibles are generally more potent than cannabis flower.

The arrest will likely be seen as laughable by more than half the country. However, it serves to highlight the divide which exists between states’ rights, federal law, and the Drug Enforcement Agency’s persistence in classifying the plant as a schedule I narcotic and not simply a plant.

The move to legalize marijuana in the State of North Carolina is picking up steam, with several pieces of legislation being introduced for passage. The most significant of which was the legalization of cannabinol in 2014, also known as CBD.

While NC patients with intractable seizures have benefited with the easy access to CBD, the painkilling, attention enhancing, mental health benefits of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, is still out of reach to all North Carolinians who wish to use the plant legally.

Consequently, as the police in North Carolina wage war on a harmless, yet extremely beneficial plant, they are ignoring rapes by the thousands. While the entire extent of the untested rape kit backlog is not known — because police are not required to count or track them — the Accountability Project estimates this number to be in the thousands. In Charlotte alone, there are over 1,000 untested kits.

Instead of police investigating the potentional violent and horrifying rape of another human being, they are going after Fruity Pebbles mixed with a plant. Heroic indeed.

According to the Daily Tarheel, a bill introduced into the NC legislature holds promise for marijuana legalization, however, even for accused lawbreakers such as Priest. The bill calls for the UNC system to study the plant’s medicinal benefits for a much more liberal selection of illnesses than the “qualifying conditions” some states have designated.

The bill lays out the development of a medical cannabis supply system and aims to create a program administered by the UNC system called the North Carolina Cannabis Research Program. The program would conduct studies to determine the safety and efficacy of cannabis as medical treatment and then develop guidelines for the appropriate physician administration and patient use of medical cannabis.

After the efficacy, safety, and delivery methods are established, usually what follows is full decriminalization of cannabis possession, cultivation, and distribution for adults. But NC appears years away from the proven system other states have already established.

For the moment the clash continues between pharmaceutical industries, natural medicine, and both federal and state law. As TFTP has reported, the pharmaceutical industry, awash with cash and lobbyists will fight like mad to continue to hold on to the market share of their highly addictive and dangerous opiates which are now responsible for annually killing of tens of thousands of Americans.

Sheriff’s will continue to make frivolous arrests of patients looking to treat their illnesses with natural medicine. Users of marijuana will still be arrested, charged, and be convicted of plant possession and consumption. and, rape victims will be second fiddle to potheads with Fruity Pebbles.

When will the insanity end?

Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.