A plan to expand Texas’ struggling medical marijuana program has been stripped down by a state Senate committee, just days after the House agreed to the upper chamber’s plan to ban all recreational THC.
New draft language for House Bill 46, which overhauls the Texas Compassionate Use Program, significantly reduces the bill’s expansion framework, limiting licenses and striking provisions that would create eligibility for chronic pain, traumatic brain injury and other conditions not currently covered by the program.
The move, which still needs approval by the full Senate, is likely to anger some House lawmakers, who agreed to pass the hemp THC ban with assurances from proponents that veterans and other people with serious medical needs would have better access under the medical cannabis program expansion.
Both the chronic pain and TBI conditions had been specifically championed by veterans’ groups who say they want greater access to the program to provide opioid alternatives. The rewrite also specifically removes provisions in the House version guaranteeing broad eligibility for veterans and the confidentiality of their prescriptions.
The exact draft language was not immediately made public, but was approved by members of the Senate State Affairs committee in an informal hearing Friday night. It will now face a floor vote in the GOP-led Senate.
State Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican, vowed to lobby for the medical marijuana expansion while pushing for the THC ban during floor debate this week. Both chambers will need to agree on a final version of the expansion before it can head to Gov. Greg Abbott to be signed into law.
“I know chronic pain is important. [We] fought for that in the TCUP as we passed that bill out of the House,” Oliverson said. “You better believe I’m going to fight for that on the other side, because I think it is of critical importance. I don’t ever want someone to be denied access to a medication that may be of benefit.”
The new draft language, however, strikes the chronic pain eligibility and also reduces the number of new business licenses for medical cannabis companies from nine to three.
See here and here for the background. The lessons here are clear: You can’t trust Dan Patrick, and if you ever want to make access easier to any kind of cannabis or marijuana products in Texas, you have to vote him out as a starting point. The question to me is whether the advocates for expanded cannabis and marijuana will continually ignore and deny these lessons as the advocate for expanded gambling have done, or if they will wise up and take appropriate action. The first opportunity to do that is next year. The Quorum Report has more.
UPDATE: After backlash from House Republicans, Patrick has backed off a little.
State lawmakers announced a deal on Sunday to make Texans with chronic pain eligible for medical marijuana prescriptions, reversing a previous decision that could have limited access to a large swath of veterans.
The agreement came after several Republican House members protested the Senate’s move to gut the planned expansion of the medicinal cannabis program, known as the Texas Compassionate Use Program. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who voiced objections to adding more qualifying conditions as recently as Saturday, announced the new agreement on social media.
[…]
Patrick has long resisted adding chronic pain to the list of eligible conditions since the program’s start in 2015. Veterans’ groups have championed the addition and estimate more than a quarter of all veterans could qualify.
According to a post from state Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, Patrick also agreed to reverse a decision to drop the number of business licenses allowed under the program from twelve to three. The deal does not appear to add back other conditions that a key Senate committee stripped out of the bill on Saturday, including traumatic brain injury, glaucoma, spinal neuropathy, Crohn’s disease and degenerative disc disease. It is also not clear if the agreement would reinstate a stripped provision designed to help veterans keep their information within the program confidential.
Patrick did not explain what led to the change of course.
Because he recognized that he went too far and for once felt the need to do something about it. Dan Patrick is about what Dan Patrick wants. He’ll be back to look for another way to tighten this up next session if we leave him in power.
F*ck Republicans.
The shocking thing is how long this mistake was allowed to stand. It is hardly shocking that Texas lawmakers would seek to end it.
Yup, taking away peoples rights is the right thing to do. Making life harder is the right thing to do. The only mistake is electing greedy sociopaths. They sure are making Texas a great place to live. Give a Fascist an inch…..