You know what I’m going to say about this, right?
A watered-down expansion of Texas’ medical marijuana program is headed to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott after the state House voted to accept significant changes to the bill made in the Senate.
House Bill 1535 expands eligibility for the Texas Compassionate Use Program to people with cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Senate stripped out a provision that would’ve allowed any Texan with chronic pain to access medical marijuana.
The bill also caps the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient that produces a high, at 1%. That’s only a nominal increase from the 0.5% allowed under current law. The bill as passed by the House capped the amount of THC at 5%, still far lower than most states that have authorized the plant for medicinal use.
The measure falls short of what many advocates had hoped for. Its sponsor, state Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, said on the House floor that her counterparts in the Senate were unwilling to budge. She begrudgingly asked the House to concur with the overhaul, rather than reject amendments tacked on in the upper chamber and send the bill to a conference committee.
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Fewer than 6,000 Texans have enrolled in the Compassionate Use Program. About 2 million people are eligible under current law.
Heather Fazio, director of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy, lamented that the proposal in its final form was “unreasonably restrictive,” despite wide bipartisan support for legalizing cannabis. A February poll from the University of Texas at Austin and The Texas Tribune found that 60% of Texans said small or large amounts of marijuana for any purpose should be legal.
“While we are glad to see the Compassionate Use Program being expanded, it’s disappointing to see Texas inching forward while other states, like Alamaba for example, are moving forward with real medical cannabis programs,” Fazio said. “It’s doing so little and we wish [lawmakers] were doing more.”
See here for the previous entry and a clear explanation of my position, if for some reason that was a mystery to you. The problem is super simple to state: Dan Patrick will not allow any significant loosening of the state’s restrictive marijuana laws, even for medical marijuana, as long as he is Lt. Governor. The solution is obvious. Making that happen is harder, but that’s really all there is to it. The Chron has more.