Gov. Beverly Perdue signed another batch of bills Friday afternoon leaving five remaining unsigned bills on her desk.

The six remaining are:

HB 104: Clarifies which documents produced by lawmakers are exempt from the public records law. Would make requests by lawmakers sent to state agencies exempt from the public records law.

HB 945: The Studies Act of 2009 catalogues a host of items and issues to be studied while the legislature is out of session.

HB 1166: Insurance Law Changes. Makes several changes including a new requirement that to get a license, insurance agents must submit fingerprints for a criminal background check.

SB 947: Provides more opportunity for a homeowner to halt foreclosure if he or she can demonstrate they can pay what is owed.

HB 836: Makes technical corrections to the state budget.

HB 1329: Consolidates various state stautes regulating criminal record expunctions. 

Among the 40-plus Perdue signed Friday are:

SB 167: Prohibits tobacco products and cell phones in prisons. Makes it a crime to provide tobacco or cell phones to inmates.

HB 667: Allows wineries to sell wine during business hours.

SB 138: Bans the recreational use of salvia divinorum, an hallucinogenic herb. Still allows the mint-like plant to be used in landscaping.

SB 786: Authorizes capital projects on University of North Carolina system campuses. The projects have a funding stream to repay debt for the projects. List includes $21.8 million for a parking deck at N.C. State University, a $10 million renovation of the Carolina Inn at UNC-Chapel Hill, $35 million for a Partnership, Outreach and Research for Accelerated Learning Building at UNC-Charlotte.

SB 464: Requires statistics on race to be kept to help identify and prevent racial profiling by law enforcement. Also requires that a law enforcement officer ensure a child is in safe hands if the child's parent gets arrested. The last provision would have prevented a case last year in which three children were stranded on Interstate 85 in the middle of the night for eight hours when a sheriff's deputy arrested the children's mother, an illegal immigrant.

Correction: Perdue had six bills to sign, not five as we previously reported. Dome regrets the oversight. 

Gov. Beverly Perdue has signed 59 of 108 bills on her desk as of this morning.

Perdue has 49 more bills to go, reports Gerry Cohen, the legsislature's bill drafting director on his Drafting Musings blog. The legislature left the pile of bills for Perdue, who by law, has 30 days to sign or veto them. The state has no pocket veto, so if the bills aren't signed by Sept. 11, they become law.

Cohen is keeping a running tab of bills signed. 

The new laws increase state oversight for fireworks display operators, establish tougher rules for using handicapped parking placards, ensure sex offenders can't drive a school bus and allow magistrates to carry a gun in a courthouse.

Still to be signed are bills that would make online bullying a misdemeanor, ban recreational use of an hallicinogenic herb, and ban smoking and cell phones in prisons. 

Gov. Beverly Perdue's desk must look a little something like Dome's cluttered and paper-filled workstation.

The legislature wrapped up its session earlier this month leaving 108 bills for Perdue to sign into law. She has 30 days after the end of the session to sign the bills and as of Sunday, day 12, she has signed none, according to Gerry Cohen, the legislature's bill drafting director.

The bills cover a host of subjects: from licensing requirements for hair braiding, to a bill that would prohibit a sex offender from getting a license to drive a school bus to a bill banning a hallucinogenic herb. Cohen has posted a list of the bills on his Drafting Musings blog.

Perdue could sign the bills into law. She could veto them. If she doesn't act within 30 days, all the bills become law, according to Cohen because North Carolina has no pocket veto.

Update: Chrissy Pearson, a spokeswoman for Perdue, said the governor is reviewing the bills with her staff.

"We don't have a decision made on all of them yet as to whether she will sign them," Pearson said.

Perdue is likely to sign bills as they are reviewed, rather than all at once, so Dome's image of the governor running through a box of pens in a sign-a-thon isn't likely to come true. 

The House gave final approval Wednesday to a ban on the recreational use of a mint-like herb that has hallucinogenic properties.

North Carolina would join 14 other states that have regulated Salvia divinorum. The bill, which now goes to Gov. Beverly Perdue for her signature, does allow for the possession of the herb in gardens and on landscapes. The herb's recreational use is increasing across the nation.

"It is cheap, easy to get and in most states perfectly legal," said Rep. Bob England, a Rutherford County Democrat and a physician. "It is regarded as the world's most hallucinogenic herb.

The bill makes illicit possession of salvia a minor crime, an infraction. A third offense would be a misdemeanor.

The legislature moved one step closer today to banning Salvia Divinorum, a legal hallucinogenic herb that studies show is gaining popularity.

A House committee unanimously approved a bill to ban the plant, which comes from Mexico and also is used in landscaping and decoration.

"It is cheap, it is easy to get, and in many states, like North Carolina, it is completely legal," said Sen. Bill Purcell, a Laurinburg Democrat and the bill's sponsor.

The bill would make it unlawful to manufacture, sell, deliver or possess the herb for reasons other than decoration. The first offense would punished by a minimum $25 fine, with tougher sanctions for repeat offenders.

"I'm not interested in putting people in jail over this," Purcell said.

The Senate voted in May to ban the substance. The bill must be approved by one more committee before it reaches the House floor. At least 14 other states have regulated the plant.

What has the Senate passed by crossover?

Here are some of the more interesting bills that made it past the upper chamber before the deadline to be considered by the House:

S.B. 138: Ban hallucinogenic herb Salvia divinorum

S.B. 1062: Allow judges to include custody of pets in a domestic protective order

S.B. 1018: Prohibit stores on the Outer Banks from using plastic bags

S.B. 11: Allow district attorneys and assistant D.A.'s to carry concealed weapons in courthouses

S.B. 307: Regulate venomous or constricting pet snakes

S.B. 167: Ban cell phones and tobacco in state prisons

More after the jump.

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The Senate moved to ban a legal hallucinogenic herb, Salvia divinorum Thursday, hoping to get ahead of a potential drug problem.

Senators voted 45 to 0 to make the substance illegal, following 14 other states that have cracked down on the herb. It has provided college students with a cheap and legal thrill for years.

The bill would make it illegal to manufacture, sell, deliver or possess salvia. The first offense would be an infraction, punishable by a minimum $25 fine.

Salvia is a member of the mint family and was used in religious rituals by the Mazatecs Indians of Mexico. It showed up in the United States in the mid-1990s as Magic Mint or Purple Sticky and can be found in head shops in Raleigh and Chapel Hill for as cheap as $14.

The herb may have been undone by online videos showing people smoking Salvia and dissolving into fits of laughter and hallucination.

North Carolina's drug schedules generally mimic the federal rules.

However, there are some differences.

The federal government has five classifications, ranging from heroin and LSD in Schedule I to over-the-counter cough syrup in Schedule V. North Carolina has an additional class, Schedule VI, which includes marijuana and some prescription drugs.

The use and effects of the drug are supposed to determine which schedule it goes into.

At the federal level, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration determine which substances are in the different schedules.

In North Carolina, the make-up of each schedule is written into state law or determined by the Commission for Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services, whose members are appointed.

Only a handful of drugs have been added administratively, however. (See Schedules I, II, III, IV, V and VI.) Most are listed in state law. (See Schedules I, II, III, IV, V and VI.)

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated cocaine's classification. It is a Schedule II drug.

Previously: Bill would add Salvia divinorum to Schedule I.

After the jump, a list of the schedules.

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At least 14 states have regulated Salvia.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 11 states have made Salvia divinorum a Schedule I drug, typically reserved for hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

They are: Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia.

In addition, Louisiana and Tennessee have banned the ingestion of salvia for hallucinogenic purposes, but still allow the plant to be grown. California has made it a misdemeanor to sell it to someone under 18.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lists Salvia as a "drug of concern" and is conducting an analysis of its risks, but there are currently no federal laws restricting it.

Matthew Gever, an NCSL policy associate, said the state laws have been boosted by concerns over YouTube videos posted by teen-agers and college students showing them using the drug.

"It's been under the radar until the last few years," he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the California law.

Previously: N.C. bill would outlaw salvia 

An anti-drug group is in a bit of a bind over Salvia.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free N.C., a Winston-Salem-based group that works to reduce the effects of drug abuse, is concerned about the use of the hallucinogenic plant Salvia divinorum.

But spokeswoman Robin Lindner said they're also leery of publicizing the fact that the Mexican herb is sold legally over the Internet and at some state nurseries.

"People don't know too much about it, so they're not going to use it," she said. "The more we talk about it, the more they want to use it."

Lindner said the partnership does not think that salvia is widely used in North Carolina right now, but it hopes the state will enact some regulations on it before it becomes more popular.

"It's really difficult to track because there are no laws," she said.

Previously: Bill would outlaw salvia; professor says ban would hurt drug research; survey shows herb popular among some college students.