CARY, N.C. (WTVD) — If you love pickleball, Cary is where you need to be this week for the Veolia North Carolina Open.

More than 12,000 people are expected to show up to watch pros from all over compete for a grand prize.

Brian Clarke, chief officer for professional pickleball association, says this is the fastest growing sport right now and more and more players of all ages are wanting to go pro.

That is why they needed a whole extra day for the pro qualifying rounds.

Throughout the week there will tournament days for men, women, doubles, mix doubles all leading up to this weekend for the finals.

Clarke says it’s a community sport and getting up close and personal with professional players will be inspiring for a lot of people.

“It is going to be an unbelievable event. The players came here for the first time last year. They love this facility. They love the town of Cary. So they’re very excited to be here. And we can’t wait to put on a great show for everybody,” said Clarke.

More information on tickets can be found here.

North Carolina lawmakers are scheduled to debate a bill Tuesday that would ban social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental permission for children who are 14 and 15 years old.

The companies that own social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram say they already have a minimum age of 13 to create an account, in compliance with federal law. But some children can easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent, and many younger kids have social media accounts.

House Bill 301 would hold the social media companies responsible for stopping them, with the state fining them up to $50,000 for each time a younger teen slips through the cracks and is able to set up an account against the rules. Families of those teens would also be allowed to sue the companies over violations, for up to $10,000.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing in a House committee Tuesday. Lobbyists for companies that own TikTok, Facebook and Instagram didn’t provide comments on the proposal last week when reached by WRAL News.

The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Up to 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with more than one-third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

Not all websites in which people can interact with others would be subject to the bans.

Email sites, news websites with comment sections, and others — such as apps that let people share texts, photos or videos with individuals or groups, but not publicly — would also be exempt from the ban.

Social media companies have been targeted by North Carolina officials in the past. North Carolina and 32 other states last year sued Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, alleging that the social media company has contributed to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on its Instagram and Facebook platforms to addict children to its platforms.

Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein was the state’s attorney general when the lawsuit was filed. As governor, he would have to sign off on any North Carolina bill restricting social media use. When the lawsuit was filed, Stein said Meta lied to parents about the risks its social media platforms posed against children.

Meta said at the time that it was committed to providing teens with safe experiences online, and that it had introduced more than two dozen tools to support teens and their families.

Some measures social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health can be easily circumvented. TikTok introduced a default 60-minute time limit for users younger than 18, but many users were able to simply enter a passcode to keep watching after the limit was reached.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bipartisan North Carolina senators have filed a bill to authorize the creation of a new state psychedelics task force to study and issue recommendations on providing access to the alternative therapies to address serious mental health conditions.

The legislation from Sens. Sophia Chitlik (D) and Bobby Hanig (R), which was filed on Wednesday, would enable the state Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create the body.

Among its responsibilities, the North Carolina Mental Health and Psychedelic Medicine Task Force would need to evaluate that “potential use of psychedelic medicine in addressing the State’s ongoing mental health crisis” and “barriers to implementation and equitable access.”

It would also be charged with assessing and making recommendations on “licensing and insurance requirements for practitioners in the State in the event that psychedelic medicines are federally reclassified and approved” by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Finally, the task force would have to consider “legal and regulatory pathways to the legalization of psychedelic medicines in the State and the potential effects of the medicines on public health,” the bill text states.

“I want to make sure that we’re both proactively supporting the mental and physical health of our veterans and other people who have experienced complex trauma and encouraging research and development, making sure that we’re taking advantage of all of the technology and all of the medical innovation that’s happening” Chitlik told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday. “So that’s really the goal of this bill. I see it both as a mental health bill and also as a step to economic development for our region.”

“I think that caring for our veterans is about as bipartisan and universal an issue as you can possibly get—not just in our state, but in our country,” she said. “When people started to hear directly from veterans who have experienced this trauma and who are experiencing this healing, I really believe that hearts and minds change.”

While the task force would be mandated to carry out various objectives if it was established, those responsibilities would only be enforceable if the department chooses to create the body in the first place, which the legislation says it “may” do.

Chitlik said the language was intentional, as the bill as introduced would not appropriate funds so this serves as a “signal” to state agencies “that the General Assembly wants more information about this, and we’re encouraging them, proactively, to explore that.”

It’s also meant to make the measure “more bipartisan and more possible to implement,” she said.

Should state officials institute the task force, it would need to be comprised of 13 members—including representatives of state departments of health, veterans affairs and commerce, four people appointed by legislative leaders in both chambers and various health experts.

This comes about two years after a North Carolina House committee approved a separate bill to create a $5 million grant program to support research into the therapeutic potential of psilocybin and MDMA and to create a Breakthrough Therapies Research Advisory Board to oversee the effort. The measure was not ultimately enacted, however.

Meanwhile in North Carolina, the speaker of the House recently said state Republicans could be willing to consider medical marijuana legalization this session.

Last month, a poll found that 71 percent of likely voters in North Carolina support legalizing medical marijuana in the state, with majorities across party lines and in every surveyed demographic—aside from people over the age of 80—in favor of the reform.

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Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.

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Despite repeated efforts in recent sessions, lawmakers have failed to move medical marijuana legalization forward. At the beginning of this year, however, a top GOP state senator said there’s “an opportunity” to advance medical marijuana legalization this session, adding felt it should be coupled with legislation to impose restrictions on unregulated intoxicating hemp products.

Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R) said “it seems to me that there’s an opportunity there to address the medical marijuana issue,” as well as hemp-derived cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC that are being sold on the market, “at some point during the session.”

Last summer, the state Senate did approve a bill that would legalize medical marijuana—but it stalled out in the House once again.

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Mushroom Observer.