Virginia’s New Hemp Enforcement Rules: How SB 543 Compares With North Carolina’s HB 328 

As North Carolina works out what to do about hemp, it is worth looking closely at a state next door that has taken a different route to the same set of concerns.

On November 1, two enforcement provisions of Virginia's Senate Bill 543 take effect. Rather than removing products from shelves, they attach steep financial and legal consequences to the act of selling hemp products that break Virginia's rules. For a state deciding how to handle the same problem, the design is worth understanding in detail.

What Virginia's November 1 Rules Actually Do

Virginia already limits what hemp products can be sold. A product intended for human consumption, whether eaten or inhaled, generally cannot exceed 0.3 percent total THC, or two milligrams of total THC per package. What changes on November 1 is not the limit itself but the consequences for selling outside it.

Two New Ways to Come After a Violator

The first provision adds illegal high-THC sales to the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. Selling an over-limit product becomes a civil violation carrying a penalty of at least $10,957 and up to $21,916, with those figures tied to and adjusted alongside the federal False Claims Act. The state attorney general can investigate and bring civil actions, and private individuals can file certain claims on behalf of the state, with the Commonwealth given the chance to step in.

The second provision makes the same illegal sale a prohibited practice under the Virginia Consumer Protection Act. That gives state and local officials the power to seek court orders stopping the sales, and it generally lets consumers who suffered a loss pursue damages.

The common thread is that these tools attach consequences to the specific act of selling a noncompliant product. They sit on top of Virginia's existing product limits rather than replacing them.

Why a Fourth Circuit State Is a Useful Comparison

There is a specific reason Virginia is a more instructive example for North Carolina than a state like Ohio or California. It sits in the same federal appeals circuit.

Both states are in the Fourth Circuit, and in January 2025 that court upheld Virginia's total-THC standard against a federal challenge. In Northern Virginia Hemp and Agriculture v. Virginia, the court held that the 2018 Farm Bill does not preempt a state's total-THC limit, and it rejected a claim that the rules unlawfully burdened interstate commerce, noting the caps apply the same way to in-state and out-of-state businesses.

That ruling is narrow but relevant. It does not bless every enforcement mechanism a state might adopt. What it establishes is that Virginia's total-THC standard has already survived a federal challenge in the circuit that also governs North Carolina, which is more than can be said for some approaches being litigated in other circuits right now.

What Virginia Is Not, and Where the Comparison Has Limits

It is worth being straight about what Virginia did, because the useful part is the enforcement design, not the specific numbers.

Virginia's caps are themselves strict. Its two-milligram-per-package limit is well below what most hemp beverages and edibles carry, and in August the state tightened things further by eliminating an exemption that had allowed higher-THC products carrying a high enough ratio of CBD. This is not a light-touch state, and pointing to it does not mean endorsing a two-milligram cap.

Virginia also did not choose enforcement instead of regulation. It already had product limits, testing and labeling requirements, and registration rules. What SB 543 adds on November 1 is another layer of enforcement remedies for violations, aimed at the businesses selling outside those limits.

How This Compares to HB 328

This is where the comparison has to be precise, because both approaches contain enforcement, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise.

HB 328's conference version is not only a product standard. Alongside its 0.4 milligram per container limit, it restricts sales and possession by anyone under 21, classifies certain violations as misdemeanors, sets escalating civil penalties for selling prohibited products, and gives the attorney general and district attorneys authority to bring civil actions. It carries real enforcement teeth of its own.

So the honest distinction is not enforcement versus no enforcement. Both bills have enforcement. The difference is in what the underlying product standard does to the market it applies to.

The Difference Worth Noticing

Virginia's enforcement remedies operate on top of a market that still exists. Compliant products stay on the shelf, and the penalties target sales that break the limits.

HB 328's 0.4 milligram per container standard is low enough that it could remove a large share of currently sold products, compliant and noncompliant alike, because it measures the product rather than the seller's conduct. Its enforcement provisions would then operate against whatever remains.

Both are real regulatory choices. The question a reader can weigh is what each product standard leaves in place for the enforcement tools to work on: a functioning legal market in one case, a much smaller one in the other.

What a North Carolina Version Could Take From Virginia

None of this requires North Carolina to copy Virginia's caps. The transferable idea is the enforcement architecture built around a market that continues to operate:

• Product limits paired with meaningful consequences for selling outside them

• Civil penalties and investigative authority aimed at violators

• A consumer-protection route that lets officials stop illegal sales and lets harmed consumers seek damages

Whether that architecture sits on top of a strict cap, a looser one, or a different standard entirely is a separate policy choice. Virginia shows one way the pieces can fit together in a Fourth Circuit state.

The Choice in Front of North Carolina

Both Virginia and North Carolina are responding to the same worry, that untested and mislabeled intoxicating products are reaching people, including minors, who should not have them. Both built enforcement to address it.

Where they differ is the product standard underneath that enforcement, and what it leaves standing. Virginia kept a legal market and made breaking its rules costly. HB 328 pairs its enforcement with a container standard that would clear most of the current market first.

When North Carolina's House takes this bill up, Virginia is a concrete, same-circuit example of how those pieces can be arranged differently. It is a comparison worth having in front of anyone weighing the two.