Politics
Bill To Ban Hemp Products With THC Is Filed In Texas House, As Governor Continues To Call For Regulations Instead
As Texas’s special legislative session enters its second week, a Republican House member on Monday filed companion legislation to a Senate bill that would ban consumable hemp products with any detectable level of THC.
Meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who vetoed an earlier version of the ban during the state’s regular legislative session, is continuing to call for a compromise that would allow small amounts of THC in hemp products.
“We want to make sure adults still have the liberty to be able to have access to non-intoxicating hemp-based products,” Abbott said in an interview with The Texan last week.
He said, however, that “as long as [products] are below three milligrams of THC content, they are non-intoxicating.”
Under SB 5, which a Senate committee unanimously advanced last week and is set to be taken up by the full chamber in coming days, consumable hemp products with any amount of THC would be illegal. Even mere possession would be punishable as a Class B misdemeanor, carrying up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Only products with two specific cannabinoids—CBD and CBG—would be allowed under the Senate proposal.
Reform advocates have hoped that, as happened during the regular session this year, House lawmakers might revise SB 5 to regulate, rather than ban, hemp products containing THC.
While that could still happen, Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R) on Monday introduced HB 5, which is effectively identical to SB 5. It had not yet been scheduled for a hearing as of Monday afternoon. VanDeaver chairs the House Committee on Public Health.
Heather Fazio, director of the Texas Cannabis Policy Center, told Marijuana Moment that the group was “surprised to see Chairman VanDeaver introduce HB 5, which appears to be a carbon copy of SB 5,” emphasizing that the proposals don’t align with Abbott’s stated goals for hemp regulation.
“Both of these bills strictly ban and criminalize any amount of THC and nearly all non-impairing cannabinoids. This means even full spectrum CBD oil would be off the market,” Fazio said. “These bills are unreasonable and do not reflect the governor’s position. Governor Abbott has called on lawmakers to regulate THC. He recently reiterated this position and called for low THC limits, but he confirmed that he does not support an outright ban.”
(Disclosure: Fazio supports Marijuana Moment’s work via a monthly Patreon pledge.)
SB 5, meanwhile, was on the Senate calendar for Monday but the body convened and quickly adjourned without taking action on any bills. Senators are next scheduled to meet on Wednesday.
Ahead of the special legislative session, Abbott specifically asked lawmakers to prioritize hemp regulatory issues. He reiterated his opposition to enacting a blanket prohibition on hemp products, which he called “a lawful agricultural commodity,” and called on the legislature to make two chief reforms.
One of Abbott’s requests was that lawmakers pass legislation “making it a crime to provide hemp-derived products to children under 21 years of age.”
Another sought a measure “to comprehensively regulate hemp-derived products, including limiting potency, restricting synthetically modified compounds, and establishing enforcement mechanisms, all without banning a lawful agricultural commodity.”
In his interview with The Texan last week, Abbott reiterated his opposition to an outright ban on consumable hemp products.
“I’m not in favor of a total ban,” he said, adding that he does support restrictions on synthetic cannabinoids and youth access to hemp products.
“I am, to be clear, in favor of a ban for those under the age of 21,” the governor explained. “I am in favor of a ban of any type of synthetic that can be added to these products that would make the product more dangerous. I am in favor of a ban of any hemp-based product that reaches an intoxication level, and that is more than three milligrams of THC.”
As Abbott has done in other interviews around the hemp bill, he again gave a somewhat confusing explanation of what he views as allowable THC limits in hemp, variously saying there should be a “three percent” or “three milligram” cap, which is a meaningful difference.
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He said in a separate recent interview with FOX 4 that “every law enforcement official I’ve talked to has said the same thing, and that is, they don’t have the resources to regulate it,” but added that “If they’re measuring the hemp product not based upon the current methodology, 0.3 percent THC, but on the milligram basis, it’s a whole lot easier to be able to measure it.”
At last week’s Senate committee hearing on SB 5, most law enforcement speakers said they supported an all-out ban on hemp products containing any THC rather than attempts at regulation. Some later added, however, that they felt the state’s limited medical marijuana program, known as the Texas Compassionate Use Program (TCUP), should be expanded to ease access by patients—especially military veterans—who could benefit from therapeutic cannabis.
Notably, Abbott in June signed a bill into law that expanded the state’s list of medical cannabis qualifying conditions, adding chronic pain, traumatic brain injury (TBI), Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases, while also allowing end-of-life patients in palliative or hospice care to use marijuana.
SB 5 and companion HB 5 are among a small handful of bills introduced for the new special session to address consumable hemp products.
Among other proposals are measures to require extensive product warning labels and limit how hemp products are packaged.
Two other newly introduced bills are HB 160 from Rep. Charlene Ward Johnson (D) and SB 39 from Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D).
The former would require a number of warning labels to be carried on hemp products with any more than trace amounts of THC, cautioning that the products can cause “cannabis poisoning that can be life-threatening to children,” harm brain development in youth, increase “risk of mental disorders like psychosis and schizophrenia” and lead to anxiety, depression and substance abuse disorders.
SB 39, meanwhile, would prohibit hemp products from being packaged or marketed “in a manner attractive to children,” limiting packaging shaped like humans, animals, fruit, cartoons or “another shape that is attractive to minors” as well as packaging that looks similar to legal products already marketed to children, for example candy or juice. It would also outlaw misleading product packaging. Violations would be a Class A misdemeanor, carrying up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
Separately, last week Rep. Nicole Collier (D) introduced a one-page bill, HB 42, designed to protect consumers in the state from criminal charges if what they believed was a legal hemp product turned out to contain excessive amounts of THC, making it illegal marijuana. It would prevent the criminalization of someone found in possession of a product that’s labeled as hemp but is determined to contain “a controlled substance or marihuana.”
In order for the person to obtain the legal protection, the product would need to have been purchased “from a retailer the person reasonably believed was authorized to sell a consumable hemp product.”
Another bill—HB 195, introduced on Thursday by Rep. Jessica González (D)—would legalize marijuana for people 21 and older, allowing possession of up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis, with no more than 15 grams of that amount being in concentrated form.
Yet another proposal would order state officials to conduct a study on testing for THC intoxication.
As for what Texans themselves want to see from their representatives, proponents of reining in the largely unregulated intoxicating hemp industry in Texas shared new polling data on Wednesday indicating that majorities of respondents from both major political parties support outlawing synthetic cannabinoids, such as delta-8 THC.
The survey also found that respondents would rather obtain therapeutic cannabis products through a state-licensed medical marijuana program than from a “smoke shop selling unregulated and untested hemp.”
Ahead of the governor’s veto last month of SB 3—the earlier hemp product ban—advocates and stakeholders had delivered more than 100,000 petition signatures asking Abbott to reject the measure. Critics argued that the industry—which employs an estimated 53,000 people—would be decimated if the measure became law.
Image element courtesy of AnonMoos.
