Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he'll press for a statewide ban on sales of all consumable THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) products in the 2025 legislative session.
Patrick named the THC ban one of his top priorities for the regular session, labeling it Senate Bill 3. State Senator Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), chair of the Committee on Water, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs, will carry the bill.
The move comes five years after state lawmakers legalized the sale of some hemp products in House Bill 1325. Since then, thousands of stores have opened across the state selling products that contain THC, one of the main active ingredients in marijuana.
"Dangerously, retailers exploited the agriculture law to sell life-threatening, unregulated forms of THC to the public and made them easily accessible," Patrick said in his statement announcing SB 3. "These stores not only sold to adults, but they targeted Texas children and exposed them to dangerous levels of THC."
Patrick said he anticipates SB 3 will have broad, bipartisan support in the Senate and that he hopes the House will pass it as well.
"We are not going to allow these retailers to circumvent the law and put Texans' lives in danger," Patrick said.
But if the bill does have bipartisan support, it may also face bipartisan opposition. Katherine Neill Harris, the Alfred C. Glassell, III, Fellow in Drug Policy at Rice University's Baker Institute, said that THC has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry in Texas with supporters on both sides of the aisle.
"The industry is pretty strong and thriving, and they see this as an existential threat, which it very much is," Harris said. "I also think that you're going to see pushback from veterans' groups, people who have come to rely on some of the products that are in this hemp market, because let's not forget, on the other side of this, the state has a very limited medical marijuana program."
Harris said that shutting down the market for THC may be next to impossible.
"The reason behind the ban is to protect public health," Harris said. "The ban is not going to fix that. What we have right now is a market that needs more regulation. If we ban these products, they're going to become even less regulated. They're going to be in the illicit marketplace, where no one cares how old somebody is when they sell them drugs."
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