Several months ago, an attorney contacted me to ask whether a particular drug was on one of controlled substance schedules, and if so, which one. I did the obvious: I looked at the schedules set forth in G.S. 90-89 et seq. I couldn't find the drug, so I concluded that it was not a controlled substance. When I got back in contact with the attorney, though, he told me about something he'd learned in the interim. Although the schedules appear in the General Statutes, they are not controlled exclusively by the legislature. Instead, the Commission for Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Services can administratively add drugs to the schedules "on its own motion." G.S. 90-88(a). The drugs added to each schedule administratively appear at 10A NCAC 26F.0102 et seq. And in fact, the Commission had added the particular drug about which the attorney had contacted me to one of the schedules. So it was a controlled substance, after all. That little eye-opener got me looking more closely at Chapter 90 of the General Statutes. I learned a couple of other things along the way. On the theory that others might find them interesting, too, here they are. First, the state controlled substance schedules aren't the necessarily the same as the federal controlled substance schedules, which can be found at 21 U.S.C. § 812 and 21 C.F.R. § 1308. Under G.S. 90-88(d), when a drug is scheduled or rescheduled by the federal authorities, the Commission must consider whether to take parallel action under state law, and should do [...]
Faculty Coordinators
