NC House votes to ban 'gas station heroin' citing worries about minors abusing it

The North Carolina House of Representatives voted unanimously to criminalize tianeptine Wednesday. It's the main ingredient in products that, for now, are widely available in convenience stores and smoke shops across the state that are often marketed as diet supplements or mood enhancers.

2024-06-12

Critics call it "gas station heroin."

"It’s the same feel you get from heroin, the same addiction you get from heroin, being sold right over the counter," Rep. Stephen Ross, R-Alamance, said on the House floor Wednesday ahead of a vote in the chamber.

In other countries tianeptine is prescribed as an antidepressant. But it's not approved for medical use in the United States, and its unregulated use has raised concerns that it's being abused by adults and minors alike.

"Taking this off the shelves in North Carolina is going to save an unknown number of families the grief, the pain, the hardship, in some cases, the deaths that have come from the substance," Ross said during a news conference after the bill was approved in the House.

House Bill 903 would make tianeptine a Schedule II drug. If it becomes law, selling or possessing tianeptine would lead to people facing the same kind of criminal penalties as with opium, fentanyl, cocaine or methamphetamine.

It has "highly addictive, opioid-like effects," Rep. Erin Pare, R-Wake, said Wednesday. "Kids, youth, are able to purchase this anywhere and take it. It’s causing severe health problems."

The U.S. Food and Drug administration has accused companies that sell it of "making dangerous and unproven claims that tianeptine can improve brain function and treat anxiety, depression, pain, opioid use disorder, and other conditions."

At least one company that sells it in North Carolina have already voluntarily pulled some products off the shelves, WRAL reported earlier this year, after reports of overdoses.

Now that the bill criminalizing it has passed the House, it will go to the Senate — where the idea also appears to have support.

On Wednesday just minutes before the House voted to criminalize tianeptine, a state Senate committee amended a separate bill intended to regulate CBD, House Bill 563, to also add in language criminalizing tianeptine. That gives the ban two possible paths to becoming law, and it indicates Senate GOP leadership could also be on board with the idea.

If either bill passes the full legislature it will then head to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's desk.