A police chief compared the shops across Texas that sell hemp-derived products to “candy stores or fireworks stands,” targeting children with bright-colored gummies and chips. At the same House Committee on State Affairs hearing on Monday, a Kentucky-based hemp seller said many of their Texas customers are women over 55 living in the suburbs.
Meanwhile, the committee members there to discuss House Bill 28, which would restrict nearly all consumable hemp products in Texas, seemed unsure of the realities of the state’s hemp industry as they stumbled through questioning about testing procedures, the difference between synthetic and natural hemp, and the properties of hemp-based products.
“We’re trying to straddle a recreational use versus a medicinal use,” said Representative Dade Phelan, the recently departed Republican House speaker. “Drawing the lines will be difficult, because we’ve been doing this for almost three hours, and I’m still not sure what we’re talking about.”
For over 16 hours, legislators heard invited expert testimony, and over 150 members of the public spoke on that bill and Senate Bill 3, one of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s top priorities. SB 3 seeks to ban all hemp products with any tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a psychoactive component of the hemp plant. Currently, hemp products with less than 0.3 percent of THC are legal in Texas, thanks to the federal farm bill of 2018 and a law passed by the Legislature in 2019.
State Affairs Chairman Ken King’s version, HB 28, is slightly more lenient than SB 3. While the bill also bans synthetic THC and most consumable or smokable hemp products, it would still allow drinkable hemp products with THC. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which regulates the sale of beer and liquor in Texas, would be put in charge of hemp beverages as well. “House Bill 28 seeks to create a regulated hemp industry in Texas,” King said at the hearing. The unregulated market is “a public health hazard, and it is our duty to protect Texas against harmful products.”
HB 28, like SB 3, seeks to increase regulations on consumable hemp products that aren’t otherwise made illegal—including 21+ age restrictions for purchases, required in-state product testing, and registration with the Department of Public Safety. Both bills have exceptions for the Compassionate Use Program, enacted in 2015, which provides access to low-THC cannabis for medical purposes for some Texans. Products containing cannabidiol (CBD) or cannabigerol (CBG), two non-psychoactive components of hemp, would still be legal under both bills.
Members of the hemp industry, like Katie Frazier, who grows her own plants, agreed with portions of HB 28 that would add needed oversight but urged committee members not to prohibit most legal THC products, a move that would effectively shut down businesses like hers. “House Bill 28 may appear more reasonable [than SB 3], but it remains deeply harmful,” Frazier said. “I want bad actors removed from this space, but you don’t clean up a room by setting it on fire.”
Governor Greg Abbott signed a hemp legalization bill into law in 2019, signaling the start of a booming hemp industry in Texas. Robin Goldstein, a cannabis economist at the University of California-Davis, said he estimates the hemp industry in Texas to be worth about $3 to 4 billion. He said legalizing hemp products doesn’t make them more common, but makes products safer and better regulated. “That’s an insidious side effect of prohibitions,” Goldstein said in testimony. “With unregulated products, you don’t know what you’re getting.”
Susan Hays, an attorney practicing cannabis law, said low doses of THC are non-intoxicating. Consuming the plant as-is with its naturally occurring levels of THC is healthier than isolating certain compounds like CBD: She said this is known as the “entourage effect” in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. She compared CBD products with low levels of THC to over-the-counter aspirin. “That’s not going to make anybody high,” Hays told the committee. “It doesn’t need to be over-regulated, because over regulation means excess cost, and that drives people back into the black and gray markets.”
Some witnesses questioned why “drinkables” were the only form of consumable allowed. King, the HB 28 author, said that drinks as opposed to gummies, are harder to mistake for a “child’s favorite.”
The Panhandle Republican added that to effectively regulate THC products the state shouldn’t take on more than it can handle. “We have an elephant here and trying to eat the elephant more than one bite at a time also causes some problems,” King said.
King acknowledged his bill would harm businesses in Texas but said it’s worth the pain. “It’ll certainly be negative, because you’re shrinking what can legally be produced and manufactured for consumption,” King said. “But I do think at some point the regulatory environment is going to exist. … We were looking for a way to start small with regulation and get it right.”
Allen Police Chief Steve Dye spoke against the House bill as he said the state should ban all THC to address enforcement issues of what constitutes legal THC and difficulties with testing. He said in Allen, kids were “streaming” into dispensaries. “This plague is in every city and every town and state agencies will never have the resources to regulate,” said Dye, who is an outspoken supporter of the Senate’s proposed ban.
Hays, the cannabis lawyer, brought a tincture, her self-professed favorite sleeping gummies, and a beverage with THC in it and, upon request, passed all three around to the state representatives like a class show-and-tell. King assured the room he wouldn’t “pop any tops” on the beverage. Legislators then asked the next several questions with the slim purple can in hand.
The committee also spent several hours hearing from the public on (and mostly against) SB 3, which is authored by Lubbock Republican Senator Charles Perry, who also sponsored the hemp legalization bill several sessions ago.
Lieutenant Governor Patrick has made the Senate’s THC ban bill one of his personal legislative crusades this session—which included a TV news-style video report featuring his personal visit to an Austin THC retail shop (where he was carded).
It’s also proven divisive—not just with those in the hemp industry, but among fellow Republicans, including Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, whose agency regulates hemp production in Texas.
Patrick, ever the buzzkill, recently threatened to force a special session if his THC ban doesn’t pass.
