You may want to stock up now if this would affect you.
The Texas Senate on Wednesday passed a state ban on all forms of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, advancing a priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to crack down on the state’s booming consumable hemp market six years after lawmakers inadvertently permitted its rise.
Senate Bill 3 — which Patrick called among his “top five” bills over his 17 years in the Legislature — would outlaw products with any amount of THC, ranging from gummies and beverages to vapes and flower buds, which are currently sold at more than 8,300 locations around the state. Current Texas law allows hemp-derived products that contain less than 0.3% of THC.
“Kids are getting poisoned today,” Patrick said in the Senate chamber as the vote neared.
He used similar language Wednesday morning. “This is a poison in our public, and we as a Legislature — our No. 1 responsibility is life and death issues,” Patrick said at a morning news conference, alongside members of law enforcement and advocates for families who saw loved ones develop behavioral health problems after consuming supposedly-legal THC products. “We’re going to ban your stores before we leave here, for good.”
The vote was 24 to 7.
“I believe this bill goes too far, in that it would put out of business the consumable hemp industry in Texas,” state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin said during debate of the bill, arguing that concerns related to sale of low-THC products should be addressed through stronger regulations.
The Texas House has yet to consider its hemp proposal, House Bill 28, which would impose stricter oversight and licensing requirements for the hemp industry rather than ban THC altogether. If the House passes its proposal, the two chambers would have to reconcile their differences before the legislation could become law.
State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, the lead author of SB 3, said that the Senate and the House were “philosophically aligned” and that there was time to work out any policy differences.
[…]
The hemp industry lobbied fiercely against a total prohibition on THC, urging lawmakers to instead impose “thoughtful regulations,” such as restricting THC sales to Texans 21 and older, requiring tamper-proof packaging and barring sales within a certain distance of schools.
Mark Bordas, executive director of the Texas Hemp Business Council, said that lawmakers were conflating consumable hemp, which, by legal definition, has a low concentration of THC, with higher potency marijuana.
Certain bad actors are “operating in the black market, in the shadows,” he said, arguing that the state needed greater oversight of the industry as a whole to block those manufacturers and retailers — rather than a total prohibition.
“We have a common enemy. We know who’s doing wrong,” Bordas said. “We’d both like to eliminate them, but the problem is, the lieutenant governor and Senator Perry are going to eliminate the entire business — including over 7,000 licensed dispensaries.”
The industry also highlighted roughly 50,000 jobs and billions in tax revenue that would be lost if lawmakers quashed the hemp market entirely. And critics argued that instead of addressing public health concerns, a ban would push consumers into an unregulated black market, easing access to more potent products.
“Bans don’t work,” Bordas said, a point that was echoed on the Senate floor by state Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio. “All it’s going to do is encourage the bad actors to fill the vacuum.”
Still, he said that the industry believed “cooler heads will prevail” in the House.
See here for the background. My rule of thumb is that anything that sends Dan Patrick into hysterics should be viewed with high levels of skepticism. My advice to Mark Bordas and the Texas Hemp Business Council is that Dan Patrick is not in any way your friend, and whether those “cooler heads” do prevail or not this session, he’ll never stop coming for you. Your best bet is to organize and rally people to vote against him. Cannabis polls well. What have you got to lose?
Before we go, I have to note this bit of unintentional comedy:
Dan Patrick visited an Austin CBD store to ask how many children buy products. He got carded.
— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) 5:05 PM – 18 March 2025
People will do that when you go around with a fake name
— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) 5:24 PM – 18 March 2025
“Don’t you know who I am?!?” “No. Now show me some ID or GTFO.”