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Author: Jay Maguire

The $23 Million Silence

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Business, CBD News & Business. No Comments on The $23 Million Silence

For thirteen years, Kevin Sabet has built a career on a single, endlessly serviceable exhortation: follow the money. Smart Approaches to Marijuana — the organization he co-founded with former Congressman Patrick Kennedy in Denver in January 2013, in the raw aftermath of Colorado’s legalization vote — has made “Big Marijuana” its bogeyman and financial transparency its cudgel. The industry, SAM tells legislators from Tallahassee to Austin, is addiction-for-profit, awash in dark money and cynical lobbyists.

It is advice worth taking. So The THC Report took it. We pulled the network’s newest federal tax filings from the IRS e-file record and ran the complete 2025 and 2026 lobby registration databases published by the Texas Ethics Commission. What emerges is a portrait Sabet himself might have sketched, had the subject been anyone else: a $23 million war chest assembled almost entirely in the dark, a disclosed charity quietly starved while its unaccountable political twin balloons, a founder whose salary migrated into invoices from his own consulting firms — and a Texas influence operation that runs not through any registered SAM lobbyist, of which there are none, but through the multistate marijuana corporations whose commercial interests in prohibition happen to rhyme perfectly with SAM’s ideological ones.

The Pyramid of Pot

Three heads, one address

The SAM operation is legally three creatures sharing a single suite at 107 S. West Street in Alexandria, Virginia: SAM Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity (EIN 47-2400657); SAM Action Inc., its 501(c)(4) political arm (EIN 47-3688463); and the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions (EIN 88-1041205), a smaller c3 vehicle. Donations to the first and third are tax-deductible and their donors face at least the theoretical discipline of charitable norms. The c4 is where politics lives — and where, under federal law, donors may remain forever anonymous.

The 2024 returns, the most recent available, tell the story in the divergence between the twins. SAM Action reported revenue of $15,865,551 — including $8,601,743 in contributions, a five-and-a-half-fold leap from the $1,576,210 it raised the year before, supplemented by $6.46 million in securities sales and $800,316 in investment income. Against that torrent, it spent a mere $1,166,233. It banked the rest, closing the year with net assets of $23,035,823.

Schedule B of the return, where contributors would be listed, is entirely restricted. Names, amounts, dates: all dark. The largest cash infusion in the organization’s history arrived precisely as the federal campaign against hemp-derived cannabinoids crested, from parties the public is not permitted to know.

The timing of the filing itself deserves a footnote in the annals of bureaucratic poetry. SAM Action’s return was submitted to the IRS on November 13, 2025 — one day after the President signed H.R. 5371, the shutdown-ending appropriations package whose Section 781 redefines federal hemp to a 0.4-milligram total-THC ceiling per container, effective November 12, 2026. The Senate had voted 76–24 just days earlier to preserve that language. Sabet told The Hill the provision was, in his words, “the biggest change in marijuana policy, I would say, in a generation,” and that his organization was proud of it. The generation-defining victory was announced on a Tuesday; the filing showing who had quietly amassed $23 million to help pay for the fight arrived, unreadable in all the ways that matter, on a Thursday.

Meanwhile the disclosed charity withered. SAM Inc.’s contributions collapsed in 2024 from $3,052,344 to $692,684. It spent $2,264,970 against $1,202,541 in revenue — a deficit of more than a million dollars — and reported $1.86 million in new liabilities. The money did not vanish from the movement. It migrated, as money in such architectures reliably does, toward the arm with no donor disclosure and the longest political leash.

The president’s invoices

Both entities’ 2024 filings check the box that nonprofit accountants least enjoy checking: Schedule L, transactions with interested persons. SAM Action’s version spells it out. Kevin A. Sabet-Sharghi — the founder’s full legal name — is the owner of two consulting firms, LUA Partners and Policy Solutions Group, Inc., which billed the organization a combined $121,322 in 2024 ($66,322 and $55,000 respectively). The disclosed scope of services: serving as the public and media contact for all three charitable organizations, communicating with advocacy consultants and key policymakers, and helping design a comprehensive plan of action.

Set beside the compensation tables, the arrangement acquires a certain elegance. Sabet’s reported W-2 compensation from SAM Inc. was $154,224 in 2021. It fell to $104,941 in 2022, then $78,927 in 2023, and finally to $6,668 in 2024 — budget dust in an organization whose executive vice president, Luke Niforatos, drew $231,946 plus benefits the same year. The founder’s compensation did not so much shrink as change costumes: from a salary line that watchdogs and reporters scrutinize into consulting invoices from companies he owns, disclosed in a schedule most readers never reach. All of it is lawful; all of it is reported; none of it is the posture of an organization whose stock-in-trade is lecturing others about financial hygiene.

Where the war chest points

Schedule I shows where SAM Action’s money went when it went anywhere at all. The organization granted $128,600 to the Coalition for Safe Communities in Beverly, Massachusetts, and $100,000 to Keep Florida Clean Inc. in Tallahassee — each grant explicitly designated, in the filing’s own words, to support state ballot initiatives against legalization — plus $10,000 to Protect Our Kids in Colorado. This is the model SAM has run for a decade, from California in 2016 to Michigan in 2018: national money, raised centrally and often anonymously, deployed into state fights under locally wholesome letterhead. The $23 million now sitting in Alexandria is a promissory note against every state campaign to come. Texas legislators convening in January 2027 might reasonably wonder how much of it has their names on it.

The Texas registry: absence, and presence

Here is what the Texas Ethics Commission’s complete lobby databases for 2025 and 2026 show about Smart Approaches to Marijuana: nothing. No SAM entity appears as a client. Neither Sabet nor Niforatos nor any officer of the network holds a Texas lobby registration. The organization whose rhetoric echoes through Senator Charles Perry’s committee hearings and the Lieutenant Governor’s press conferences maintains no registered presence in Austin whatsoever. The nearest ideological kin on the registry is Texans for Safe and Drug-Free Youth, represented both years by lobbyist Shelton Green.

What the registry does show is who else has been arming up — and when. Green Thumb Industries, freshly minted as a Texas Compassionate Use conditional licensee, registered three Austin lobbyists on October 8, 2025, weeks after the HB 46 license awards. Verano Holdings carries a four-lobbyist team into 2026, led by Robert Miller. And Trulieve, the largest of the multistate operators, has assembled something closer to a phalanx: Lara Keel’s registration jumped two prospective compensation bands between 2025 and 2026, into the $100,000-to-$149,999 range; Will Yarnell registered for Trulieve Texas on April 10, 2026; Allison Billodeau for Trulieve Holdings on June 26.

The Notice Nobody Was Supposed to Notice

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Texas Legal & Regulatory News. No Comments on The Notice Nobody Was Supposed to Notice

Friday, tucked between a scratch-ticket rulebook and a batch of wastewater fines in the back pages of the Texas Register, the Department of State Health Services quietly finished a fight it started five years ago. The notice — 51 TexReg 4597, filed June 25, signed out by DSHS General Counsel Cynthia Hernandez under interim Commissioner Imelda Garcia — reinstates the agency’s 2021 modifications to two entries in the state’s Schedule I: tetrahydrocannabinols and marihuana extract.

If that sounds like administrative housekeeping, understand what the housekeeping accomplishes. Since November of 2021, when Judge Jan Soifer enjoined those definitions in the Sky Marketing case, the entire Texas delta-8 market has operated under the protection of that injunction. On May 1, the Texas Supreme Court took it away, reversing the courts below and siding with the agency. The mandate issued June 5. Friday’s notice is DSHS closing the loop — republishing the definitions exactly as they stood before the injunction, as though the intervening five years were a rounding error.

They were not a rounding error. They were the years this industry was built in.

What the Definitions Actually Say

The reinstated tetrahydrocannabinols entry sweeps in every THC naturally contained in the cannabis plant except one thing: up to 0.3 percent delta-9 in hemp as defined by the Agriculture Code. It then reaches further, to synthetic equivalents, derivatives, and isomers with similar chemical structure and pharmacological activity, and it names the cis and trans variants at multiple positions before adding the kicker — because chemical nomenclature isn’t internationally standardized, compounds of these structures are covered regardless of the numerical designation of atomic positions. That last clause exists for one reason: so nobody can renumber their way out of Schedule I.

The marihuana extract entry does parallel work on the processing side. An extract containing any cannabinoid from any cannabis plant is Schedule I unless it’s derived from hemp and holds under 0.3 percent delta-9 on a dry weight basis — and even then, separated resin, crude or purified, gets no exemption at all.

Read the two entries together and the state’s position is stark. Naturally occurring hemp material and genuinely hemp-derived extracts under the delta-9 threshold remain outside the schedule. Everything else in the family — delta-8, delta-10, THC-O, THCP, HHC, and above all anything converted or synthesized, which as a matter of practical chemistry describes most of the commercial delta-8 ever sold in this state — now sits inside it.

This Is an Enforcement Story, Not a Paperwork Story

Here is the part that needs saying without any softening: this notice will be read by police chiefs, sheriffs, and district attorneys as a permission slip.

Five days before it published, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee staged its interim hearing on THC, and I use the word staged advisedly. The witness table was cast like a morality play: the Allen police chief who ran the North Texas raids, a sheriff, a DA, a traveling anti-THC activist who called the products a weapon of mass destruction, and a committee vice-chair who invoked Nancy Reagan by name, promised a new ban bill for January, and expressed his hope — out loud, on the record — that the state’s new fees would put most of the industry out of business. That was the season premiere of Reefer Madness, Texas edition. Friday’s notice is the prop department handing the cast real ammunition.

An officer who wanted to seize delta-8 in 2023 had to reckon with an injunction and a genuinely murky legal landscape. That officer now has a published Schedule I listing, a Supreme Court opinion behind it, and a political climate in which raids make careers rather than end them. Chief Steve Dye told the committee his labs found seized products testing far above their labels; expect that playbook — seize, test, charge — to travel. There remain real defense arguments about how the schedules interact with the Health and Safety Code’s penalty groups and the hemp statutes, and good lawyers will make them. But an argument made from a defense table is a categorically worse position than an argument never made at all. Retailers and distributors should plan for enforcement and let the lawyers’ arguments be their parachute rather than their plan.

Look at Your Shelves This Week

For anyone holding inventory, the practical assignment is an unsentimental review, done promptly and documented as you go. Walk the warehouse with the definitions in hand. Anything containing or marketed as containing delta-8, delta-10, THC-O, THCP, HHC, or any other THC isomer or analogue belongs in the flagged column. So does anything produced by chemical conversion — delta-8 made from CBD is the textbook case. So does any extract, distillate, or concentrate whose paperwork can’t actually demonstrate hemp origin and sub-threshold delta-9 on a dry weight basis, and any separated resin product, which the exemption pointedly declines to cover. THCA flower and pre-rolls were already casualties of the March 31 total-THC rules and belong on the same list.

For everything flagged, pull the certificates of analysis and read them skeptically: is the lab accredited, does the method measure total THC post-decarboxylation, does the supplier’s story hold up. Where the chemistry is synthetic or the paper trail is thin, quarantine the product and get advice from qualified counsel — and I’ll offer the standing caveat, with affection: I’m a strategist, not a lawyer, and nothing here substitutes for the real thing.

A word, too, for the kratom and mushroom sectors, who may be feeling like spectators: you’re not. Nothing in Friday’s notice touches mitragynine or amanita. But anyone who watched the July 7 hearing noticed its shape — a committee that has learned it can prosecute an entire product category through interim charges, curated witness lists, and administrative reclassification, without ever passing a bill. Hemp is the test case. The machinery being assembled will not be dismantled when it finishes with THC.

The Case We Get to Make

Now the better news, because there is some, and it isn’t decorative.

Prohibitions born of administrative maneuver are less durable than prohibitions born of statute, and this one arrives wearing its weaknesses openly. The Governor vetoed the ban the Legislature passed and asked for regulation instead — that veto message remains the most authoritative statement of Texas policy on this subject. The committee’s own invited expert, Baker Institute drug policy fellow Katharine Neill Harris, told the senators to their faces that they were conflating cannabis with mental illness and homelessness. The sheriff they called, Chambers County’s Brian Hawthorne, testified that what rural Texas actually needs is mental health deputies and telehealth, not a ban. And Senator Charles Perry’s confession that the fee structure is designed to bankrupt registrants — “the cost of doing business is going to get so high that most of them will go out of business, I hope” — is the kind of quote that wins lawsuits and editorial boards alike.

That is raw material, and the interim is when it gets shaped. The committee accepts written testimony, and the record being built right now is the record the 2027 session will legislate from. Businesses that can walk into that fight with clean inventories, accredited lab results, and documented compliance are the living rebuttal to the claim that this industry can’t be regulated because it can’t be trusted. The argument that wins this — the only one that ever has — is that regulation demonstrably works and prohibition demonstrably doesn’t: it forfeits the testing, the labeling, the age-gating, and the tax revenue, and hands the market to people who don’t return phone calls from the state.

The next six months decide whether these products return to Texas shelves as legal, regulated items or disappear into the same gray market the state claims to fear. Get your houses in order, and get your stories on the record — preferably before someone with a badge asks for them.

Sources: Texas Register, Vol. 51, July 10, 2026, at 4597–4604 (TRD-202602610); Sky Marketing Corp. v. Texas Dep’t of State Health Servs. (Tex., opinion May 1, 2026; mandate June 5, 2026); Texas Senate Committee on Health & Human Services interim hearing, July 7, 2026.

Did DSHS Just Tell the Hemp Industry to Ignore Its Own Rules Until After the Election?

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Texas Legal & Regulatory News.

A motion for rehearing tells a strange story…..

 

There are moments in public policy when the mask slips.

According to a motion filed Sunday in the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, representatives of the Texas Department of State Health Services have allegedly been telling licensed hemp businesses not to worry about complying with some of the agency’s most controversial new hemp regulations because those provisions are not currently being enforced—and may not be enforced until after November.

Yes, November.

If true, the implications are staggering. Not merely because regulators would be quietly suspending enforcement of rules they spent months promulgating and defending in court, but because the explanation allegedly offered by agency personnel raises an even more troubling possibility: that politically inconvenient enforcement actions are being deferred until voters have cast their ballots.

The allegation appears in a Motion for Rehearing filed by the Texas Hemp Business Council and other plaintiffs challenging DSHS’s new hemp rules. The filing includes sworn affidavits from industry figures Lukas Gilkey and Kevin Salganik describing recorded conversations with a senior DSHS inspector. According to the motion, the inspector stated that DSHS legal staff and supervisors had instructed personnel not to enforce the agency’s new “total THC” standard and to revert licensing fees to their previous levels.

More remarkably, the inspector allegedly told one caller that “November” represented the likely timeline because “midterms and a lot of other stuff comes open.”

One need not be especially cynical to understand why such a statement might attract attention.

A Curious Change of Heart

Only weeks ago, Texas argued to the Court of Appeals that maintaining an injunction against the new rules would substantially harm the state by preventing DSHS from enforcing its revised regulatory framework. The state vigorously opposed temporary relief, insisting that the agency needed the ability to immediately implement its new total THC standard and dramatically increased licensing fees.

Yet, according to the newly filed motion, once the appellate court dissolved the injunction, DSHS personnel allegedly began telling industry participants the exact opposite.

“Don’t worry about total THC,” one inspector allegedly told a caller. “We’re not going to enforce anything with total THC.”

Another statement attributed to the same inspector is even more direct: “Something has changed. We’re not doing total.”

If these statements accurately reflect agency policy, the obvious question is simple: what changed?

Neither DSHS nor the Attorney General’s office has publicly announced any suspension of enforcement. No emergency guidance appears to have been issued. No formal rulemaking has been initiated. Instead, according to multiple industry participants, the agency has apparently been communicating this information privately, one telephone call at a time.

Regulation by whisper campaign is an unusual administrative model.
Government by Ambiguity

The immediate casualty of such an approach is legal certainty.

Texas hemp operators occupy one of the most heavily scrutinized and politically contentious regulatory environments in the state. Licenses, inventory, contracts, supply chains, laboratory testing, insurance coverage, and financing decisions all depend upon businesses understanding what the rules are and, equally important, whether those rules will actually be enforced.

At present, industry participants appear to be confronting an impossible dilemma.

Should they comply with the newly adopted total THC standard—potentially destroying existing inventories, disrupting supply chains, and imposing massive costs—or should they rely on verbal assurances from DSHS personnel that the rules are not presently being enforced?

Neither option is attractive.

Businesses that continue operating under preexisting standards risk future enforcement actions if the agency reverses course. Businesses that voluntarily comply with rules the agency itself is allegedly declining to enforce may simply put themselves out of business unnecessarily.

This is not regulatory oversight. It is regulatory roulette.

The Election Question

The most explosive aspect of the filing is, unsurprisingly, political.

The hemp plaintiffs suggest that DSHS’s alleged enforcement pause may reflect an effort to avoid public backlash before the November elections. The evidence offered for this proposition is limited principally to the inspector’s reported comments regarding “November,” elections, and future enforcement.

Whether a court ultimately finds such allegations persuasive is another matter entirely. Judges are generally reluctant to infer political motives absent substantial evidence, and state officials would undoubtedly deny that electoral considerations play any role in enforcement decisions.

Nevertheless, the allegation itself highlights an uncomfortable reality facing Texas policymakers.

For the last two legislative sessions, elected officials have repeatedly portrayed the hemp industry as an urgent public health threat requiring immediate and aggressive intervention. If that characterization is accurate, delaying enforcement until after an election would be difficult to justify. Legitimate public dangers, after all, do not customarily observe campaign calendars.

Conversely, if the agency truly believes enforcement can safely wait until November—or beyond—it inevitably raises questions regarding the urgency and necessity of the regulations in the first place.

Those are questions legislators and regulators may eventually have to answer.

The Larger Problem

Whatever happens in the litigation, the episode illustrates a deeper pathology in Texas cannabis policy.

The state has spent years attempting to maintain an increasingly implausible distinction between a tightly controlled medical marijuana program serving a relatively small patient population and a broadly accessible hemp marketplace that millions of Texans have embraced.

The resulting contradictions have produced exactly what one would expect: lawsuits, inconsistent enforcement, market instability, and administrative confusion.

Businesses are left attempting to divine regulatory intent from hallway conversations and telephone calls. Agencies are forced to reconcile statutory language with political demands. Consumers are left uncertain about which products are lawful today and which may become contraband tomorrow.

No industry—least of all one employing tens of thousands of Texans—can operate indefinitely under those conditions. Which perhaps is the point.

If the allegations contained in the hemp plaintiffs’ latest filing are accurate, the state’s regulators may have inadvertently demonstrated precisely why the Court of Appeals should restore the injunction pending appeal: because when the agency itself cannot clearly articulate what rules are in force, regulated parties cannot reasonably be expected to comply with them.

The law is supposed to provide notice.

It is not supposed to require a phone tree.

The Arithmetic of Ambition

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Texas Legal & Regulatory News.

When the Texas Department of Public Safety announced its corrected tabulation methodology for the Compassionate Use Program expansion on May 8, 2026—more than a month after the original awards—it did so with the bureaucratic understatement for which government agencies are justly famous. A “correction” to the “tabulation methodology,” the agency explained, had required a recalculation of conditional license awards. Three companies previously selected would lose their provisional awards. Three companies previously excluded would gain them. The department assured everyone that nothing of substance had changed—only the math.

This is either deeply reassuring or deeply troubling, depending on whether you’re among the winners or losers in this particular reshuffling. For anyone paying attention to the trajectory of cannabis regulation in Texas, however, it should feel grimly familiar.

The Architecture of Error

Let’s stipulate the technical facts first, because they matter. In August 2025, DPS published a document indicating that four scoring categories in the TCUP expansion process would each receive equal weighting—25 percent of the total score. Applicants reviewed this document. Presumably, they structured their proposals accordingly. The department took applications through mid-September 2025, then began the laborious process of evaluation.

On December 1, 2025, DPS announced nine conditional Phase I licenses. On April 1, 2026, it announced three additional Phase II licenses, bringing the total to twelve. By all public appearances, the matter was settled. Licensed operators began the compliance infrastructure necessary for eventual dispensing. Unlicensed companies digested their rejection and explored alternatives. The cannabis industry, accustomed to regulatory volatility, moved on.

Then, after the score sheets became public, DPS identified what it called a “tabulation error.” The methodology used to calculate final scores, it explained, had not actually applied the 25-percent equal weighting published in the August document. Instead, someone had been weighting individual line items differently. The department had, in other words, scored applicants against criteria fundamentally different from those it had publicly promised—and then only noticed the discrepancy after the awards were announced and publicized…

FDA-Approved and State-Licensed Products Are Moved to Schedule III

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

The biggest day in federal cannabis policy in decades arrived this morning — and the fine print is doing a lot of work.

 

For years, cannabis advocates, industry operators, and policy watchers have dreamed of the day the federal government would move marijuana off Schedule I — off the shelf it shares with heroin, away from the company of substances deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Today, April 23, 2026, that day arrived. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the order. The DEA made it official. Cannabis, in limited form, is now a Schedule III controlled substance under federal law.

Savor the moment for a breath, and then read the fine print.

What moved to Schedule III is not cannabis as a category. It is not hemp-derived THC. It is not the THCA flower sitting in the case at your neighborhood smoke shop. It is not recreational marijuana, not CBD gummies, not delta-8 cartridges, not a single product in the vast and inventive gray market that has operated under the protective ambiguity of the 2018 Farm Bill. What moved to Schedule III is a carefully circumscribed set of products: FDA-approved drug formulations containing delta-9-THC derived from Cannabis sativa L., and marijuana subject to a qualifying state-issued medical marijuana license.

That’s it. That’s the win.

Everything else — and there is a great deal of everything else — remains Schedule I. Any marijuana product that is neither FDA-approved nor covered by a state medical license is still, under federal law, as illegal today as it was yesterday. The DOJ press release phrases this with lawyerly precision: the order applies to products “subject to a qualifying state-issued license authorizing the licensee to manufacture, distribute, and/or dispense marijuana or products containing marijuana for medical purposes.” The recreational market in legal states? Still Schedule I. The hemp-derived THC products that have carved out a multi-billion dollar niche in the regulatory gray zone? Still Schedule I. Still, potentially, federal felonies.

This distinction is not incidental. It is the architecture.

To understand why, you have to appreciate who benefits from today’s order and who does not. The clear winners are the multi-state operators — the MSOs that have spent years building licensed, regulated, vertically integrated cannabis businesses in states that permit medical use. These companies have labored under Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, a provision that denies standard business deductions to enterprises trafficking in Schedule I or II substances. Moving to Schedule III eliminates that burden, potentially freeing up tens of millions of dollars in annual tax liability for the larger operators. It also accelerates federally permitted research, clears a path for banking relationships long denied to Schedule I businesses, and, less tangibly but not insignificantly, removes some portion of the stigma that has clung to the industry like smoke to fabric.

The losers are the hemp-derived THC operators — the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers who have built businesses on the premise that Farm Bill hemp, with its permissive treatment of cannabinoids other than delta-9, created a lawful pathway to the intoxicating cannabis market. Today’s order does not validate their business model. If anything, it sharpens the line of demarcation between the licensed, legitimate cannabis industry and what the MSOs have long called the gray market — and have more recently started calling an unlawful competitor.

Consider the sequence. For the past two years, multi-state operators have been suing smoke shops and distributors across the country — in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas among other states — arguing that hemp-derived THCA products are functionally marijuana and should never have been sold under Farm Bill cover. Today’s rescheduling order hands those operators a cleaner rhetorical weapon. If you want the protection of federal tolerance, get a state medical license. If you don’t have one, the federal government has just made its position more explicit, not less.

The order was signed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and it comes roughly four months after President Trump’s executive order directing the administration to move forward on rescheduling — a process that had languished through years of NPRM proceedings, administrative hearings, and public comment periods under the previous administration. That the Trump DOJ completed the move, however narrowly scoped, is genuinely notable. It is not the comprehensive reform that advocates sought, but it is a real policy change with real economic consequences for a real industry.

The next inflection point is June 29, 2026, when the DEA has announced it will convene an expedited hearing to consider whether marijuana as a category — not just the FDA-approved and state-licensed subset — should be reclassified to Schedule III as well. That hearing is where the broader argument will be fought. It is where the hemp industry will have to confront the question it has largely avoided: if marijuana moves to Schedule III wholesale, does the Farm Bill gray zone collapse entirely, or does it survive through a different legal theory?

No one has a clean answer to that question yet, which is precisely why it’s the most important question in cannabis policy right now.

What we know today is this: the federal government drew a line, and it drew that line around the licensed medical market. THCA is on the wrong side of it. Hemp-derived intoxicants are on the wrong side of it. The gray market — creative, entrepreneurial, constitutionally interesting, and genuinely beloved by the consumers it serves — just got a clearer target on its back.

That’s not a reason to despair. It’s a reason to pay very close attention to what happens on June 29.

 

Jay Maguire covers cannabis policy, hemp industry litigation, and the politics of drug reform. He is political editor of a cannabis industry trade publication and an investigator working on behalf of hemp retailers and distributors in regulatory and legal proceedings.

The TCUP Math Problem: How a Busted Spreadsheet Rewrote the Medical Cannabis Map

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

There is a particular kind of regulatory failure that does not arrive with subpoenas or headlines. It slips in quietly, dressed up in spreadsheets and procedural language, hiding in a denominator that nobody bothers to question. It looks clean, professional, even defensible—right up until someone actually runs the numbers.

That is precisely what has happened in the Texas Compassionate Use Program expansion under House Bill 46. The Department of Public Safety published a scoring rubric that promised a simple, balanced framework: four categories, each carrying equal weight. What the State implemented was not that framework. It was something materially different, and the difference is not philosophical or interpretive. It is mathematical, and it changed who won.

The Rule the State Published

DPS told applicants, in plain English, that four categories would each account for 25 percent of the final score. Those categories—Security and Infrastructure, Accountability, Financial Responsibility, and Technical and Technological Ability—were presented as equal partners in the evaluation process.

There was nothing subtle about that promise. It was repeated in the rubric, relied upon in applicant preparation, and understood as the governing structure of the competition. Four equal slices of the pie, adding cleanly to one hundred percent. That is the rule applicants were told they were competing under.

 

The Structure Beneath the Rule

Beneath that clean promise, however, sat a more complicated reality. Each category contained a different number of scoring items. Security and Infrastructure included fourteen separate elements. Accountability included twelve. Financial Responsibility included eight. Technical and Technological Ability, the category that speaks most directly to whether an operator can actually run a compliant medical cannabis program, included just four.

Each of those items was scored by three evaluators on a scale of zero to five hundred. That structure produces dramatically different raw scoring ceilings. A perfect score in Security and Infrastructure reaches twenty-one thousand points, while a perfect score in Technical and Technological Ability tops out at six thousand.

There is nothing inherently improper about uneven category sizes. Any seasoned regulator or procurement officer has seen rubrics where some sections are more granular than others. The critical requirement, and the one that determines whether the system is fair, is normalization. If the State promises equal weighting, then each category must be scaled to ensure it actually contributes equally, regardless of how many individual items it contains.

What Equal Weighting Actually Requires

If you want four categories to count equally, the math is straightforward. You do not sum raw totals. You convert each category into a percentage of its own maximum possible score. Once each category is expressed as a percentage, you then apply equal weighting across those percentages.

In practical terms, that means taking an applicant’s score in each exhibit, dividing it by that exhibit’s maximum possible score, and then weighting each result at twenty-five percent. When you add those four weighted values together, you get a final score that reflects the rule the State said it would follow.

This is not exotic mathematics. It is standard practice across regulated industries, procurement systems, and competitive licensing frameworks. It is how you translate unequal components into equal influence.

 

What the State Actually Did

Instead of normalizing each category to its own maximum, DPS applied a single divisor across all four exhibits. Every raw score, regardless of whether it came from a category with fourteen items or one with four, was divided by twelve.

At first glance, that may look like a harmless simplification. It is not. When you divide unequal totals by the same number, you do not equalize them. You preserve their imbalance and carry it forward into the final score.

The result is a set of “Applicant Scores” that look standardized but are anything but. Security and Infrastructure retains a ceiling of 1,750 points, while Technical and Technological Ability is capped at just 500. When those numbers are combined, the weighting shifts dramatically. Security and Infrastructure ends up driving roughly thirty-seven percent of the final score. Accountability contributes about thirty-two percent. Financial Responsibility falls to roughly twenty-one percent. Technical and Technological Ability, the category that should stand shoulder to shoulder with the others, is reduced to just over ten percent.

That is not a rounding discrepancy or a clerical oversight. That is a complete reweighting of the system the State said it was using.

Why This Is Not a Close Call

There is no gray area here. Dividing unequal numbers by the same constant does not normalize them. It preserves their proportional differences. A category with a maximum score of twenty-one thousand will remain three and a half times more influential than a category capped at six thousand if both are subjected to the same divisor.

This is arithmetic, not interpretation. Once the method is set, the outcome follows automatically. The State did not accidentally drift away from equal weighting. It implemented a formula that could never produce equal weighting.

The result is that the rule applicants relied upon and the method used to evaluate them are not the same.

 

This Was Not an Isolated Mistake

If this were a one-off inconsistency buried in a single application, it might be dismissed as a transcription error. It is not. A review of virtually every scoring entry across both phases of the licensing process shows the same method applied without exception. Raw totals were divided by twelve, and those results were summed to produce final rankings.

This was the system. It was applied consistently. It was just not the system the State said it would use.

 

What Happens When You Fix the Math

When the applications are recalculated using the correct method—normalizing each category to its own maximum and then weighting them equally—the rankings change in ways that matter.

The very top of the list remains relatively stable. Companies that performed well across the board continue to perform well. The disruption occurs in the middle tier, where licenses are actually awarded.

Under the corrected calculation, three companies that received conditional licenses fall out of the top twelve. In their place, three different applicants move into winning position. Those new entrants are Texas-based operators who performed exceptionally well in Technical and Technological Ability, the very category that was most heavily discounted under the State’s method.

What emerges is not randomness or noise. It is a clear pattern. The flawed formula elevated categories with more scoring items—primarily infrastructure—and suppressed the influence of technical competence. When you restore the intended weighting, applicants who excelled in technical execution rise accordingly.

Why This Matters Beyond the Applicants

It is tempting to treat this as a dispute between competing companies, but that framing misses the point. Every license issued under this system determines where dispensaries are built, which companies invest capital in Texas, and how patients access medical cannabis.

For nearly a decade, Texas operated with just three dispensing organizations serving a vast and geographically dispersed patient population. House Bill 46 was supposed to correct that imbalance and bring the program into alignment with the needs of the state.

If the licensing process that governs that expansion is built on a misapplied formula, the consequences are not abstract. They are felt in the placement of facilities, the availability of products, and the ability of patients to obtain treatment without driving across half the state.

This is not a paperwork problem. It is a capacity allocation problem with real-world effects.

The State’s Position and Its Exposure

The State represented to applicants that each category would carry equal weight. Applicants relied on that representation in structuring their submissions. That reliance is not incidental; it is the foundation of the competitive process.

When the implemented methodology diverges from the published rule, the issue moves beyond process into legitimacy. The State is no longer simply defending a policy choice. It is defending a result that does not align with the rule it set.

That is a difficult position to maintain, particularly in a regulated industry where credibility is currency. Every future licensing decision, every enforcement action, and every legislative hearing will be measured against whether the State followed its own rules here.

 

The Path to Fixing It

The practical reality is that this problem is easier to fix than most regulatory failures. No one is asking the State to revisit subjective scoring decisions. The evaluators’ judgments on individual items are not in dispute, and the underlying data has already been recorded.

The correction is purely mathematical. Each exhibit score can be normalized to its maximum, weighted equally, and recombined into a final score that reflects the rule as written. From there, the State can determine how to align the licensing outcomes with the corrected rankings.

There are several paths available. They are known to DPS and the state leadership. The data is already in hand. The question is whether the State is willing to apply it correctly.

Final Consideration

This is not a partisan dispute or an ideological fight over cannabis policy. It is a question of whether a rule that was clearly stated was actually followed.

The State said each category would count equally. It used a formula that made them unequal. That is the entire issue, stripped of rhetoric.

Arithmetic has a way of cutting through arguments. It does not respond to intent or justification. It reflects only what was done. In this case, what was done does not match what was promised.

Texas now has a choice. It can defend the result as it stands, or it can correct the calculation and bring the outcome into alignment with the rule. The former invites challenge and erodes confidence. The latter restores both.

The calculator is indifferent. It will produce the same answer every time. The question is whether the State is prepared to accept it.

Author’s Note:

This article has been revised to more clearly present the scoring calculations underlying the Texas Compassionate Use Program licensing process. The updates expand the mathematical explanation and align the analysis with the methodology described in the State’s published rubric.

 

Ohio Tried to turn Hemp into Marijuana Fiat

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Hemp.

A new lawsuit alleges Ohio used definitional trickery, interstate discrimination, and possibly an invalid veto process to hand a lawful hemp market to in-state marijuana licensees.

There are only so many ways a government can say, with a straight face, that it supports “regulation” while using the machinery of the state to crush lawful competition and reward politically favored insiders.

Ohio may have just found a new one.

 

A newly filed lawsuit by North Fork Distribution I, LLC, which does business as Cycling Frog, alleges that Ohio Senate Bill 56 does not merely regulate hemp. It effectively converts federally lawful hemp products into “marijuana” under Ohio law unless they are cultivated, processed, and sold through Ohio’s licensed marijuana system. In plain English, the complaint says Ohio tried to use state law to wall off its market, criminalize ordinary interstate commerce, and give the spoils to existing in-state marijuana operators.

That is not sound policymaking. That is market allocation with a badge and a press release.

The central allegation is straightforward. Congress legalized hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill and protected its interstate transportation. Ohio, according to the complaint, responded by narrowing the state definition of “hemp” so aggressively that many federally lawful hemp-derived products would be treated as “marijuana” once they enter Ohio. The result, the plaintiff argues, is that out-of-state hemp businesses face potential criminal exposure while Ohio’s licensed marijuana businesses receive an exclusive commercial advantage.

And the most revealing evidence may not be in the rhetoric of the complaint at all. It is in the state’s own legislative paper trail.

An attachment to the filing includes the Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s “Synopsis of Conference Committee Amendments,” which states that products falling outside the narrowed hemp definition “will be considered marijuana and sold exclusively in marijuana dispensaries.” That language is politically devastating because it strips away the usual camouflage. This was not merely about labeling, testing, or age gates. According to the complaint and the attached synopsis, Ohio structured the law so that products excluded from the new hemp definition would not disappear from commerce altogether. They would be redirected into a protected channel: licensed marijuana dispensaries.

That is the kind of detail that matters. It tells you what the law does, who it benefits, and who gets shoved overboard.

The lawsuit raises two major constitutional claims. First, it argues that S.B. 56 violates the Dormant Commerce Clause by discriminating against interstate commerce and favoring Ohio’s in-state marijuana industry over out-of-state hemp operators. Second, it argues that the law is preempted by federal law because Congress expressly protected the interstate transportation of hemp and removed hemp from the federal controlled-substances framework. Ohio, the complaint says, cannot simply relabel federally lawful hemp as “marijuana” at the border and pretend the Supremacy Clause does not exist.

 

That alone would make this an important case. But the complaint goes further.

 

It also alleges that S.B. 56 was never validly enacted in the first place because Governor Mike DeWine purportedly used the line-item veto in a manner forbidden by the Ohio Constitution. The filing contends that the governor did not merely veto appropriations items. He instead struck substantive policy language and tried to condition approval of the bill on that basis. If true, that is not a hemp technicality. That is a separation-of-powers problem. It means the case is not just about cannabinoid policy. It is about whether a governor can rewrite legislation under the guise of veto authority.

 

The complaint also does what strong injunction pleadings are supposed to do: it ties the constitutional injury to real-world harm. Cycling Frog’s verification affidavit says the company has substantial Ohio sales, inventory, contracts, retail relationships, and sunk investment tied to the market, and that it stands to lose a significant share of its business if the law takes effect. The company alleges that it cannot practically continue operating in Ohio without risking prosecution once federally lawful products are reclassified by Ohio as “marijuana.”

 

That matters because this is where many state officials and industry opportunists play games. They talk as though hemp operators are abstract villains and every product is a policy thought experiment. But companies are making payroll, signing leases, building supply chains, and operating in reliance on federal law and existing state frameworks. When a state abruptly rewrites definitions to favor a politically connected channel, the damage is not theoretical. It is immediate, concrete, and often irreversible.

 

This is why stakeholders in Texas should pay very close attention.

 

The tactic on display in Ohio will look familiar to anyone who has watched the hemp wars in other states. First comes the moral panic. Then the selective outrage. Then the carefully staged media narrative about “intoxicating hemp” destroying civilization. Then, once the public is softened up, comes the real play: not a neutral safety framework applied evenly across markets, but a commercial carve-up that favors incumbent interests and punishes disfavored ones.

 

That is what makes this case larger than Ohio.

 

If a state can redefine lawful hemp into contraband whenever the category becomes economically inconvenient, then the 2018 Farm Bill means whatever a hostile bureaucracy says it means that week. If a state can criminalize out-of-state products while granting in-state licensees exclusive control of the same market, then “regulation” has become a euphemism for economic protectionism. And if governors can carve up substantive law with an improvised theory of veto power, then the constitutional structure itself becomes just another casualty of the culture war.

 

There is also a political lesson here that the hemp industry needs to learn, and learn fast.

 

The people trying to destroy this market are rarely content with honest argument. They do not merely say they prefer a different regulatory structure. They inflate, smear, panic, and posture. They wrap commercial self-interest in the language of safety and then dare anyone to notice the transfer of wealth and power underneath. That game works only as long as no one reads the bill language, the committee synopsis, the enforcement hooks, and the market consequences together.

 

This lawsuit does exactly that.

 

It forces the question that every honest regulator should have to answer: if your concern is truly public safety, why are the products not banned across the board? Why are they being shifted into a preferred in-state system? Why do existing licensees get protection while interstate competitors get prosecution risk? Why does the law read less like a neutral regulatory framework and more like a franchise agreement for politically approved sellers?

 

Those are not rhetorical flourishes. They are the questions at the center of the case.

 

Ohio will, of course, say this is about health and safety. States always do when they are caught red-handed building a moat around favored economic actors. Courts will have to decide whether that explanation survives scrutiny. But on the face of the complaint, this is not a frivolous challenge or a performative filing. It is a serious constitutional case backed by a legislative paper trail and a concrete injury record.

 

National operators, retailers, compliance professionals, litigators, and investors should watch this closely. So should every Texas stakeholder who still thinks these state fights are isolated skirmishes. They are not. They are part of a coordinated pattern in which lawful hemp is tolerated when it is politically weak, demonized when it grows, and targeted for absorption or elimination when entrenched interests decide the market has become too valuable to leave alone.

 

That is the broader truth.

 

The fight is no longer just over cannabinoids. It is over whether law means what it says, whether interstate commerce still exists when a hostile state dislikes the product category, and whether politically disfavored businesses have any protection against governments that rewrite definitions to achieve outcomes they cannot defend openly.

 

Ohio may have overplayed its hand.

 

Now we will see whether the courts notice.

Washington’s Two-Handed Approach to Hemp

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Health.

Medicare just became the nation’s first large-scale, reliable buyer of hemp — provided you are old enough, sick enough, and compliant enough to qualify. Everyone else — the twenty-something vaping a delta-8 cart in Austin, the Hill Country soccer mom with a bag of sleep gummies — is staring down a federal crackdown capable of erasing most of the existing retail market within a year. That split screen is the essential fact of American drug policy in 2026: Grandma’s CBD has received its federal blessing, while corner-store delta-8 is being fitted for the gallows.

The $500 Olive Branch, and What It Actually Means

On April 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services quietly activated a pilot program allowing certain seniors to receive up to $500 annually in hemp-derived products through participating provider groups. Don’t mistake this for a subsidy program or a reward card you swipe at the Buc-ee’s hemp counter. Beneficiaries cannot walk into their local shop, save the receipt, and bill Washington. Instead, CMS will reimburse organizations operating inside select Innovation Center models — ACO REACH, Enhancing Oncology, and LEAD — up to $500 per eligible patient, with those organizations controlling which products are furnished as part of clinician-guided care plans. The federal government is not subsidizing brands. It is commissioning a tightly controlled cannabinoid experiment on its own terms.

The strings attached are considerable. Products must be hemp-derived and remain within the 0.3 percent delta-9 THC limit established by the 2018 Farm Bill, along with a hard cap of only a few milligrams of total THC per serving. Inhalables, synthetics, and anything with obvious intoxicating potential are excluded. Certain patients — those with disqualifying conditions including some substance use disorders and serious pulmonary disease — are carved out entirely. Dollars flow to accountable care organizations and similar entities, not to beneficiaries directly, which means clinicians and administrators control the tap. For Texas seniors, particularly in rural communities, “legal hemp” is about to acquire a respectable institutional twin: doctor-approved, chart-notated, dispensed through credentialed intermediaries rather than the shop on the frontage road.

FDA’s Wink and Nod — and Who It Leaves Out

To prevent the pilot from colliding with existing law on its first day, the Food and Drug Administration issued a new enforcement memorandum focused on Medicare-linked hemp products. The agency has spent years insisting that CBD in food and supplements occupies an unresolved regulatory gray zone. Now it is signaling a narrow pocket of “enforcement discretion” — an official look-the-other-way — when CBD is dispensed under clinician guidance inside CMS models and meets strict safety, labeling, and potency standards.

That carve-out does not extend to the broader Texas hemp marketplace. Retail tinctures, gummies, beverages, and vapes sold directly to consumers remain burdened by the same unresolved FDA questions, patchwork state rules, and ever-present risk that a compliance misstep converts inventory into contraband. Even brands that have invested seriously in rigorous testing, GMP-style production, and responsible labeling gain no special status from the fact that CMS is quietly paying for distant cousins of their products. Washington has blessed cannabinoid use in a narrow, medicalized lane — and left the general market precisely where it was, except for one item buried in a shutdown bill that threatens to blow everything else up.

The 0.4mg Time Bomb

While the Medicare pilot is launching, a separate piece of federal policy is counting down. Buried in last year’s government funding package to end a shutdown, Congress rewrote the federal definition of “hemp” to impose a hard ceiling of 0.4 milligrams of total THC per finished container — in addition to the already-familiar 0.3 percent delta-9 THC by dry weight. Any hemp-derived cannabinoid product exceeding that threshold will, once the law takes full effect, no longer qualify as hemp at all.

The numbers involved are not abstractions. Lawyers and analysts tracking the change warn that the cap would disqualify virtually all existing full-spectrum and intoxicating hemp products, along with a meaningful share of mainstream CBD items that contain trace THC exceeding the 0.4mg floor across a full bottle. Trade groups and beverage-law specialists estimate that 95 percent or more of current ingestible hemp products are over the line. In Texas alone, estimates peg the hemp market at roughly $8 billion, supported by thousands of jobs in farming, processing, distribution, and retail — an industry that would be, in the words circulating through trade commentary, “effectively shut down” if the cap is enforced as written. What was packaged inside the Beltway as a fix to the “intoxicating hemp loophole” looks, from the I-35 corridor, like a controlled demolition of an industry Washington once invited people to build.

Texas: Fresh Off a Victory, Walking Into an Ambush

No state illustrates the whiplash more vividly than Texas. Earlier this year, a hard push to ban hemp-derived THC products — spearheaded by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, backed by substantial Republican leadership — ran headlong into a mobilized hemp industry and a governor who ultimately vetoed the ban. The fight was real: hearing rooms filled, phone lines lit up, and small business owners made the case that prohibition would gut a multi-billion-dollar market. When the veto ink dried, many Texas operators concluded they had bought themselves at least a few years of breathing room.

Then came the federal shutdown deal. Buried in that compromise is the 0.4mg cap that accomplishes, at the national level, almost exactly what the failed Texas ban would have accomplished within one state. Nearly all consumable hemp products with any meaningful THC content become unlawful — not just in Houston and Lubbock but in Boise and Buffalo. The same operators who spent months fighting Austin now find themselves on the receiving end of a Washington decision they had virtually no hand in shaping. The sense of ambush is not rhetorical. It is palpable in every industry conversation and in local coverage from San Antonio to Dallas.

A Split Screen Made for Political Conflict

The juxtaposition is difficult to ignore. On one side of the screen, Medicare dips a cautious institutional toe into hemp, allowing clinicians in select models to furnish carefully constrained CBD and low-THC products as part of structured care plans. On the other, Congress and federal agencies have redefined hemp in a way that treats nearly anything beyond a trace as beyond the pale. One program recognizes cannabinoids as legitimate tools for managing pain, sleep, and chronic conditions — provided they arrive small, boring, and physician-mediated. The other treats any cannabinoid product that people actually choose to buy as a loophole to be sealed.

For Texas officeholders, this creates a set of choices that will not stay quiet. Supporting the federal 0.4mg cap means endorsing a Washington compromise that threatens to dismantle an $8 billion in-state industry that their own voters just finished defending against a home-grown ban. Backing the Medicare pilot, on the other hand, means conceding that cannabinoids are legitimate medicine for the very population most likely to appear in Republican primary elections — which undercuts a good deal of the rhetoric used to justify state-level crackdowns. Trying to ignore the contradiction does not make it disappear. Washington is now setting the terms for a sector that Texas policymakers thought they had partially tamed on their own.

Two Experiments, One State on the Line

From a policy standpoint, the United States is running two concurrent experiments. In the Medicare pilot, CMS and its partners will gather data on whether clinician-guided hemp products reduce pain, improve sleep, or lower downstream costs in selected patient populations, using the $500 annual ceiling as both incentive and constraint. In the broader economy, the new hemp definition and 0.4mg cap will test how resilient an industry can be when its core products are redefined into illegality by a few lines in a funding bill nobody was watching closely enough.

For Texas, which embraced hemp as a politically viable middle ground when broader cannabis reform remained a bridge too far, the stakes of both experiments are anything but theoretical. Producers, processors, and retailers were told the rules: test your products, get licensed, pay your taxes, and you can build a durable business under state and federal law. Now they are learning that the most important rule was always subject to renegotiation in a distant capital, with local investment and livelihoods treated as acceptable collateral. Whether Texas responds to that reality with the same ferocity it brought to Austin, or accepts it as the price of playing in a federally defined market, will say a great deal about whose experiment this actually is — and who gets to survive it.

Meanwhile Back in the Land of the Living

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in CBD News & Business.

 

As ghosts haunted the Texas Capitol this Halloween, a very mortal figure in Washington—Senator Mitch McConnell—quietly made a move that sent a shiver of relief through America’s hemp industry.

 

In a letter released late Thursday, McConnell agreed to remove the restrictive hemp language from the Senate Agriculture Appropriations bill.

This reversal spares the industry from an existential threat that would have criminalized hemp-derived cannabinoids under the guise of “closing loopholes.”

The effort was spearheaded by Senator Rand Paul, alongside HIFA, USHRT, and AHAA, whose combined advocacy forced McConnell’s hand. It’s a reminder that when the industry speaks with one voice—armed with science, law, and persistence—Senate power brokers tend to listen.

 

McConnell’s office still calls this a “temporary victory,” vowing to revisit the issue in the 2024 Farm Bill. But for now, the legal standard remains intact:

 

0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight — nothing more, nothing less.

 

The battle continues, but this week proves one thing:

 

Even the author of the 2018 Farm Bill can still hear the living when they make enough noise.

HB 256 and the Criminalization of Youth

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

In what feels like a legislative magic trick gone wrong—now you see them, now you don’t!—the Texas Legislature is once again trying to regulate the hemp industry… while simultaneously not having enough members in the building to legally do anything at all. And yet, two wildly different bills have somehow emerged from this disappearing act, revealing exactly who’s pulling the strings—and who’s being sawed in half.

A Hammer for a Scalpel: HB 256 and the Criminalization of Youth

Filed by Rep. Charlie Geren (R-Fort Worth), House Bill 256 appears to be the House leadership’s attempt at a narrow compromise—a bill designed to address Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s public safety messaging without going so far as to criminalize the industry itself.

At first glance, it’s a tactical retreat from full prohibition. But in practice, HB 256 imposes sweeping and punitive restrictions that would criminalize basic adult behavior. The bill raises the age to 21 for any sale, purchase, or even presence on the premises of a retailer selling consumable hemp products. It creates Class A misdemeanor penalties for retailers and Class C misdemeanors for minors who purchase or attempt to purchase—complete with driver’s license suspensions, mandatory community service, and jail time for repeat offenders.

In substance, HB 256 copies the criminal statutes governing tobacco, but it goes a step further by criminalizing mere proximity: if you’re 20 and walk into a shop that sells delta-8 gummies or CBD beverages, you’re breaking the law. If you’re 18 and want to work at your family’s hemp store? Sorry—unless it’s your parents’ store and you’re under constant supervision, you’re barred from employment altogether.

The message is clear: we won’t ban it—but we’ll make it nearly impossible to operate around it. While Geren is a respected member of the House with deep institutional ties, there’s little question this bill reflects a broader political strategy, not personal zeal. It’s a way to throw the Senate a bone without endorsing full-scale prohibition—an attempt to appear responsive to Patrick’s rhetoric while keeping the House from walking off a political cliff.

But make no mistake: this is not regulation. It’s criminalization by another name.

SB 53: A Bureaucrat’s Dream, A Retailer’s Nightmare

On the opposite end of the Capitol, Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas) has filed SB 53, a sprawling reimagination of hemp regulation that signals both hope and hazard. On paper, the bill offers what the industry has long needed: a comprehensive, coherent regulatory framework that recognizes the unique challenges of cannabinoids, particularly when consumed as beverages or intoxicating products.

But like all omnibus legislation, the devil is in the details.

SB 53 proposes creating a new state agency—a regulatory body separate from both the Department of State Health Services and the Department of Agriculture. Modeled in part on the Alcoholic Beverage Commission, this agency would license and oversee retailers, processors, transporters, and manufacturers, with the full authority to issue permits, assess taxes, conduct inspections, and levy penalties. The effective date? January 1, 2027, a signal that this framework would take time—and possibly multiple sessions—to implement.

While the bill introduces added costs and compliance burdens, it also reflects deep engagement with stakeholders who’ve long demanded a seat at the regulatory table. Among those quietly shaping its contours are CRAFT co-founder Rhiannon Yard and industry compliance expert Chasity Wedgewood, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that any new system protects both public safety and the survival of lawful hemp businesses.

Their influence shows. SB 53 acknowledges the existence and growing popularity of hemp-derived beverages, an area regulators have historically ignored or misunderstood. It also seeks to professionalize the market—requiring operator training, product testing, and transparent labeling—all longstanding priorities of CRAFT and its partners.

Still, there are risks. Without strong safeguards against monopolization, SB 53 could become a Trojan horse for corporate consolidation, enabling large alcohol distributors or vertically integrated cannabis players to squeeze out smaller Texas-based operators. Licensing schemes that mimic the liquor industry often come with high barriers to entry, burdensome fees, and political gatekeeping. If passed without amendment, SB 53 may serve the interests of well-funded players at the expense of the local shops and family businesses that helped legal hemp take root in Texas.

Caught in a Clock That Isn’t Ticking

Here’s the wrinkle: none of this may happen anytime soon.

Thanks to a House walkout over unrelated legislation, the first special session has been paralyzed by a quorum break. The Senate has passed its priorities—including the unconstitutional ban that was SB 3—but the House can’t legally conduct business until a quorum is restored.

What does that mean for HB 256 and SB 53? For now, they’re frozen—not dead, but not moving either. And with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick threatening multiple special sessions until he gets his wish list passed, we could see these bills resurface in a second, third, or even fourth called session.

The policy fight is far from over. In fact, it hasn’t truly begun.

 

The Stakes Are Clear

Together, HB 256 and SB 53 present a vivid contrast. One is a political maneuver wrapped in moral panic, criminalizing young adults and choking off employment opportunities. The other is a blueprint for legitimacy, but one that could still choke innovation if its administrative scope is allowed to balloon unchecked.

We need smart regulation, not prohibition in disguise. That means:

  • Age-gating products with POS scanning, not blanket bans.
  • Supporting third-party lab verification, not relying on faulty enforcement labs like Armstrong.
  • Creating clear rules and licensing paths, not criminal penalties for retail clerks.

And we need regulators and legislators who listen to those with real-world experience, like Yard and Wedgewood, who have logged more hours building compliance systems than most lawmakers have spent reading the bill text.

The future of Texas hemp is still unwritten. But if these two bills are any indication, we’d better make sure the next chapter isn’t written by people who don’t understand the story.

Twin Bills, One Goal: Sweeping Hemp Crackdown

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

Why HB 5 Mirrors SB 5.

 

A second shoe has dropped in the Texas Legislature, and it has the same number as the first. House Bill 5, filed by Rep. Gary Van Deaver during the first called session of the 89th Legislature, is a word-for-word duplicate of Senate Bill 5 by Sen. Charles Perry. The filing sets the stage for what appears to be a coordinated attempt by legislative leadership to force through a prohibitionist overhaul of the state’s hemp market with unprecedented speed and severity.

The significance of the bill number cannot be overstated. In the Texas legislative process, bills are numbered sequentially as they are filed. But the first ten or so slots in each chamber are traditionally held for measures that reflect leadership priorities. HB 1 is the state budget. SB 1 is its Senate counterpart. When the House and Senate each file a bill with the same number, and the text of those bills is identical, it is a clear signal to members, lobbyists, and stakeholders that the bills are being coordinated at the highest levels and are intended to move in lockstep.

In this case, HB 5 and SB 5 do more than signal urgency. They mark an aggressive attempt to criminalize nearly every cannabinoid product currently legal under Texas law, with almost no exceptions. The text of the bills prohibits the manufacture, sale, or possession of any consumable hemp product containing any cannabinoid other than cannabidiol (CBD) or cannabigerol (CBG). This prohibition includes popular products containing Delta‑8 THC, Delta‑9 THC derived from hemp, THCP, HHC, and other minor cannabinoids that make up a significant portion of the Texas hemp industry’s product line.

Both bills introduce criminal penalties that go well beyond regulatory oversight. Manufacturing or distributing non-compliant products would constitute a third-degree felony. Possession would become a Class C misdemeanor, escalating with repeat offenses. For retailers and consumers alike, the consequences of noncompliance would be swift and harsh. There is no grace period for existing inventory, no allowance for naturally occurring trace cannabinoids, and no scientific standard for impairment or threshold-based enforcement.

Moreover, the regulatory framework proposed by HB 5 and SB 5 imposes punitive financial burdens on businesses. The legislation requires a $10,000 licensing fee for each location where hemp is processed or products are manufactured. It sets a $20,000 annual registration fee for every retail location selling hemp-derived products and imposes a $500 registration fee for every product SKU offered for sale. These costs are not marginal. They are designed either to force small operators out of the market or to consolidate the industry under a few large, well-capitalized firms that can absorb the costs and navigate the bureaucracy.

Every product must be tested using high-performance chromatography by a DEA-registered, ISO-accredited lab located in Texas. Each item must carry a QR code linking to the Department of State Health Services registry. Law enforcement is granted inspection authority over all retail locations, and business owners must grant written consent to allow DPS or local law enforcement to conduct physical inspections of their premises at any time. In short, compliance is not a path to security—it is an ongoing vulnerability.

In parallel, both bills include sweeping marketing and packaging restrictions. Products may not resemble candy, use cartoon images, reference medical use, display green crosses, or imitate brands familiar to minors. While the goal of reducing youth access is a legitimate one, the enforcement mechanisms are overbroad and leave room for arbitrary interpretation.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the bills do not provide for exemptions for patients, veterans, or those who rely on hemp-derived products for pain relief, sleep, anxiety, or seizure control. There is no carve-out for Texas Compassionate Use Program patients. The state’s medical cannabis program remains limited to a narrow list of qualifying conditions and a short roster of licensed operators. HB 5 and SB 5 do not bridge this gap. They widen it.

Governor Abbott’s veto of SB 3 earlier this summer made clear that he does not support total prohibition. In his veto statement, he emphasized the importance of protecting consumers, regulating intoxicating products, and preserving the legal hemp market created by the Legislature in 2019. Abbott called for age restrictions, labeling rules, validated testing, and a framework that supports—not destroys—Texas hemp businesses.

HB 5 and SB 5 ignore that directive. Their drafters appear to be daring the Governor to veto again or challenging the House to rubber-stamp the Senate’s punitive approach. Whether this strategy succeeds depends in large part on the House Committee process and whether stakeholders can educate members in time.

For now, the industry must take HB 5 as seriously as SB 5. They are one and the same. And they represent the most immediate threat to the existence of a lawful, regulated, and economically vital hemp market in Texas since the passage of HB 1325 five years ago.

The Texas Hemp Reporter will continue tracking developments on both bills, publishing updates, stakeholder analysis, and legal commentary throughout the special session.

If you operate a licensed hemp business in Texas and have not yet contacted your state representative, now is the time to do so. The House has a choice: double down on prohibition or course-correct toward regulation. That decision may hinge on what happens with HB 5.

Governor Abbott Vetoes SB 3, Preserving Texas Hemp Industry—for Now

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

In a major political reversal that stunned both advocates and opponents of cannabis reform, Governor Greg Abbott has vetoed Senate Bill 3, the controversial measure that would have effectively banned nearly all hemp-derived THC products in Texas.

The bill—championed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and passed by both chambers of the Legislature in May—sought to outlaw products containing any detectable amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a sweeping move that would have shuttered hundreds of small businesses and sent shockwaves through the $8 billion hemp industry.

 

Governor Abbott allowed the bill to sit on his desk for the full 20-day consideration period before finally acting late Sunday. As of this writing, no formal veto proclamation has been released, but sources close to the governor cited concerns about economic disruption, job losses, and veterans’ access to therapeutic hemp products as key factors in his decision.

 

“This veto is a lifeline,” said Russell Dowden, publisher of Texas Hemp Reporter and long-time industry voice. “Governor Abbott heard our message—and the voices of thousands of veterans, farmers, patients, and retailers—and made the right call.”

 

The decision marks a rare public break between Abbott and Patrick, whose office had made passage of SB 3 a top priority. Patrick has since doubled down on his opposition to THC products, telling the press that he expects a renewed push to “clean up” the market during a special session or the 2027 Legislature.

 

Industry leaders and civil liberties groups had lobbied intensely for the veto, warning that SB 3 would criminalize legal commerce, create confusion for law enforcement, and potentially violate both state and federal constitutional protections.

 

Meanwhile, litigation challenging the law was already in motion. A coalition of farmers, manufacturers, and medical companies had filed suit last week seeking to block enforcement on grounds of irreparable harm.

 

Abbott’s veto does not end the debate, but it buys crucial time for the hemp industry to regroup, professionalize, and advocate for a more rational regulatory framework.

 

“This was never about getting high,” said one veteran advocate. “It was about staying alive, staying out of pain, and staying in business.”

As the political dust settles, all eyes now turn to whether Lt. Gov. Patrick will push for a special session—and whether lawmakers can craft a smarter, science-based policy that protects consumers without crushing small businesses.

 

 

The Texas Hemp Reporter will continue to track developments and publish updates as they unfold.

Texas Governor Veto’s HEMP BAN SB3

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in News.

 

People from every corner of the industry—consumers of our products, allies, enemies, friends, and frienemies alike—have been blowing up my phone and sliding into my DMs for the past 36 hours. The question on everyone’s mind: *What’s Abbott going to do about SB 3?*

 

Well, I’ve been around this building and this issue long enough to have a very clear set of criteria for what I call a **sophisticated wild-ass guess** (SWAG). And at the risk of torching what little remains of my reputation as an astute observer of Texas politics, I’m going to say it outright:

 

**Governor Abbott will veto SB 3 tonight.**

 

 

Now, I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before. But I’m also secure enough in the knowledge that if I *am* wrong, the legal teams already sharpening the knives for a constitutional challenge to SB 3 are in excellent position to succeed. These aren’t amateurs. They’re the same group I helped assemble and coordinate in *Sky Marketing v. Hellerstedt*, where we secured a temporary injunction that kept the industry alive and operational for the past five years. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.

 

So maybe this isn’t wisdom talking. Maybe it’s just the overconfidence of a guy who knows more than anyone else about what goes on under that Pink Dome. But I’ve got receipts, I’ve got perspective, and I’ve got the late-night texts to prove just how deep this runs. So here’s my reasoning—clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and grounded in 30 years of watching Texas politics up close.

 

Abraham Lincoln—consistently ranked among the greatest Republicans ever to hold office—once observed, “It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” It’s a line that’s held up remarkably well, especially in Texas politics, where the contrast between our top two statewide officeholders could not be more vivid.

 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, never one to let a microphone go cold, seems determined to test Lincoln’s wisdom on a near-daily basis. If there’s a press conference, a pulpit, or a news camera within 50 feet, Dan will find it—and fill it—with grim anecdotes, shaky claims, and the kind of moral panic that would make Carrie Nation blush. Whether it’s teenage “scromiting,” zombie stoners, or apocalyptic warnings about hemp gummies, Patrick has become a one-man flood of fear and folksiness, rarely pausing long enough to wonder whether the rest of us have stopped listening.

 

Governor Abbott, by contrast, prefers to let the silence work for him. He rarely indulges in theatrics or legislative sermonizing. Instead, he waits. Watches. And when the moment is right, he reaches for his veto pen and uses it like a surgeon—or, depending on the bill, a medieval executioner. Say what you will about Abbott, but he doesn’t need to grandstand. He lets his vetoes do the talking—and in the case of SB 3, that pen may be the last line of defense between reason and full-blown reefer madness.

 

Patrick may fill the airwaves, but Abbott owns the red ink. And if we’re lucky, the man who knows how to keep his mouth shut might also be the one who saves an entire industry by opening his hand and signing the veto.

 

Let’s not mince words: SB 3 is Dan Patrick’s political theater, pure and simple. It’s vintage Patrick—moral panic dressed up as public safety. The grieving mothers, the sheriff associations, the horror stories about “scromiting teens” and gummy-eating schizophrenic zombies—it’s all pageantry designed to override logic and stampede legislators into doing what he wants.

 

And what Patrick wants is a legacy. He wants to be the culture warrior who cleaned up the state by banning “weed candy” from every smoke shop in Texas. But this isn’t about safety. It’s about power. Control. Discipline. Optics.

 

Abbott knows it. He’s seen this show before. And he’s not in the business of playing second fiddle—especially not to a guy who keeps trying to script his finale.

 

In 2023, Abbott vetoed 76 bills—many of them out of the Senate—and used the veto pen as a blunt instrument to remind Patrick who the real executive is. He’ll do it again if the circumstances call for it. And SB 3? This bill practically dares him to do it.

 

Let’s be brutally honest: the Texas Compassionate Use Program (TCUP), which Patrick is trying to pitch as the “responsible” alternative to the hemp industry, is turning into a slow-rolling scandal.

 

What the public doesn’t see—but insiders can’t stop talking about—is that TCUP has become a boutique monopoly, guarded by DPS and run under rules so loose you could drive a truckload of influence through them. Thanks to the way the expansion was drafted, anyone can be an undisclosed owner of a license, as long as they’re not on paper as “engaged in day-to-day operations.”

 

Let that sink in. There are potentially millions in profits being skimmed off a state-created cartel, and the public has no legal right to know who’s cashing in. For all we know, the same political operatives and campaign donors who helped push this bill are waiting in the wings with license equity—and nobody’s asking questions.

 

Meanwhile, the product being offered through TCUP is wildly overpriced, inconsistently dosed, and—if you believe the patient forums—barely effective. The people who *need* cannabis the most are getting gouged for subpar relief, and the only reason anyone would willingly switch from affordable, over-the-counter hemp to TCUP is if they were *forced* to by law.

 

Abbott has stayed quiet about all of this, but make no mistake—he’s paying attention. And there’s no chance he wants that mess hung around his neck. Not when he can smell the burn of a corruption story that hasn’t broken yet. Not when TCUP is shaping up to be the next “Paxton problem.”

 

If the cronyism wasn’t enough to give Abbott pause, there’s a constitutional landmine waiting to go off in the fine print of TCUP—and it’s the kind of thing Texas Republicans don’t forgive.

 

Under federal law, anyone who signs up for a medical cannabis registry—even in a state where it’s legal—is considered a user of a federally controlled substance and therefore prohibited from owning or purchasing firearms under the Gun Control Act.

That means every Texan who enters TCUP to access legal cannabis for PTSD, pain, or cancer symptoms automatically loses their Second Amendment rights. Permanently. No guns, no ammo, no concealed carry.

 

You can imagine the headlines: “Texas Governor Signs Law That Disarms Veterans.” “Medical Marijuana Registry Becomes Gun Ban List.”

 

That’s not hyperbole. That’s the law. And it’s exactly the scenario Patrick was counting on most of us missing. TCUP isn’t a solution. It’s a trap—and it’s baited with constitutional consequences.

 

Abbott is a lawyer. A former judge. He knows exactly what kind of blowback this will create, especially among his core base. And if Patrick thinks he can dump that kind of political liability onto Abbott’s desk and walk away clean, he might want to check his math.

 

Let’s zoom out. Polls show a double-digit margin of opposition to SB 3 among Republican voters. Over 150,000 signatures have landed on Abbott’s desk opposing the bill. Veterans groups, libertarians, physicians, parents, and small business owners have united against it. Even Donald Trump’s camp has quietly encouraged Abbott to walk this back.

 

SB 3 isn’t just bad policy. It’s politically toxic. And Abbott, ever the pragmatist, can see where this leads. Sign the bill, and he hands his enemies an opening. Veto it, and he gets to be the adult in the room. That’s a win. Not just for the industry. For Abbott himself.

 

Let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say Abbott doesn’t veto and lets SB 3 become law by default. What happens next? We sue. And we win.

 

The federal lawsuit filed on June 20 goes straight to the heart of the matter: federal preemption, vagueness, due process, regulatory takings, Commerce Clause violations, and overbreadth. And we’re not filing with a hope and a prayer. This is the same legal team that obtained the only injunction that has ever protected our industry from overreach. They’re disciplined, strategic, and already five moves ahead.

 

A veto avoids all that. But if Abbott decides to punt? We’ll be in court by Monday—and I like our odds.

People forget that Greg Abbott isn’t just a political operator—he’s a conservative jurist. And his decision-making, when you peel away the PR, comes down to four instincts:

 

* Protect constitutional order

* Minimize legal exposure for the state

* Support small business and property rights

* Avoid public association with corruption or political embarrassment

 

SB 3 fails every one of those tests.

 

It’s legally dubious. It endangers the state’s standing in federal court. It obliterates a thriving industry while propping up a crony-driven monopoly. And it’s wrapped in Patrick’s fingerprints like a bad penny taped to a campaign mailer.

 

This bill isn’t just wrong. It’s radioactive. And Governor Abbott knows it.

 

He doesn’t need to be a hero. He just needs to be smart. And he is.

 

So no, I don’t have a crystal ball. But I’ve got 30 years of Texas politics under my belt, and I’ve never seen a moment more ripe for the veto pen.

 

Abbott has the tools. He has the cover. He has the motive. And he sure as hell has the opportunity.

 

My call? He vetoes SB 3 tonight.

 

And if not?

 

Then we go to court. And we go to war.

 

BREAKING: Gov. Abbott Signs TCUP Expansion as Clock Ticks on THC Ban Decision

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in News.

June 21, 2025 — In a headline-grabbing move that belies the deeper political drama beneath it, Governor Greg Abbott today signed House Bill 46 into law, enacting the most significant expansion of the Texas Compassionate Use Program (TCUP) since its inception. The new law allows physicians to recommend low-THC cannabis for chronic pain, expands access for veterans with PTSD, and marginally increases the allowable THC cap.

But the bill is far from a clean win for medical cannabis advocates—and for many in the broader cannabis community, it may feel like a Trojan Horse.

 

The Political Trade-Off

 

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick leveraged HB 46 as a political bargaining chip to strong-arm reluctant House members into voting for Senate Bill 3, the sweeping ban on hemp-derived cannabinoids that passed in the waning days of the session. Patrick made it clear: if lawmakers wanted HB 46, they had to swallow the poison pill of SB 3.

Capitol sources confirm that House lawmakers who had long fought for TCUP expansion were told, bluntly: support the ban, or your patients get nothing.

Now, with HB 46 signed and codified, Patrick has delivered on his part of the deal. But Governor Abbott’s final decision on SB 3 looms large. He has until midnight, Sunday June 22, to sign it, veto it, or let it quietly pass into law without his signature.

 

HB 46: Expansion, Yes—But Also a Trap

 

While the expansion of medical access will help a subset of patients, HB 46 also introduces a highly restrictive and monopolistic licensing structure that critics say will entrench the existing TCUP oligopoly and lock out the broader cannabis industry—including hemp operators and legacy entrepreneurs.

Key concerns include:

 

  • No pathway for current hemp licensees or manufacturers to participate in the expanded TCUP system, even if they meet quality and safety standards.
  • Arbitrary license caps and undefined “moral character” criteria that will allow the Department of Public Safety to deny applications without meaningful oversight or appeal.
  • A closed-loop supply chain that forces vertical integration—limiting the market to those with millions in capital and existing political relationships.
  • Out-of-state control of licenses and a strong whiff of insider favoritism. At least one TCUP license is backed by national investors with lobbying ties to both Patrick and powerful Senate committee chairs.

 

Critics argue that while the bill appears to expand access, its actual effect is to reinforce a cartel structure—one that Patrick and his allies can control through regulatory choke points. The expansion is not broad legalization; it’s restricted commercialization.

“HB 46 is a gilded cage,” said a former legislator who asked not to be named. “It gives the illusion of progress while institutionalizing exclusion.”

The Bigger Battle: SB 3

 

All of this unfolds in the shadow of SB 3—the bill that would ban all hemp-derived THC products including Delta-8, Delta-9, Delta-10, and THCa, currently sold in legal retail markets across Texas. The legislation threatens to wipe out a multi-billion-dollar industry, shutter hundreds of small businesses, and criminalize the very products that many consumers, including veterans and patients not covered by TCUP, depend on for relief.

A newly filed lawsuit by Texas retailers and manufacturers in Travis County seeks injunctive and declaratory reliefagainst SB 3, arguing it violates federal preemption, the Takings Clause, and due process protections. That case may delay enforcement, but it doesn’t undo the political damage.

 

Abbott’s Decision Will Be Defining

 

Governor Abbott has historically taken a moderate stance on cannabis, expanding TCUP in previous sessions and signaling openness to low-THC therapies. With three recent polls—including one from the Texas Politics Project—showing majority Republican opposition to a ban, pressure is mounting for a veto of SB 3.

If Abbott signs it, prohibition returns under a new name. If he vetoes it, the fight for regulatory reform can begin in earnest. If he does nothing, the bill becomes law by default—and with it, the state’s most draconian anti-cannabis law in a decade.

In that case, HB 46 may go down not as a win for patients—but as the velvet glove hiding the iron fist of prohibition.

 

 

Jay Maguire is Political Editor of the Texas Hemp Reporter, Executive Director of the Texas Hemp Federation, and co-founder of CRAFT: the Cannabis Retailers Alliance for Texas. Reach him at maguire@texashempfederation.org or 512-954-8054.

Texans Forced to Choose Between Pain or Firearms

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

It’s not a hypothetical. It’s not a loophole. It’s the law—and it’s targeting some of the most vulnerable Texans.

Every patient in the Texas Compassionate Use Program (TCUP), our state’s limited medical marijuana registry, is already in legal jeopardy under federal law. The moment a Texan with PTSD, cancer, epilepsy, or chronic pain enrolls in TCUP and begins legally using low-THC marijuana prescribed by a licensed physician, they are—under federal law—a “prohibited person” who can no longer legally own or possess a firearm.

Most of them have no idea.

Here’s why: under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), anyone who is an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance—even if that substance is legal under Texas law—loses their Second Amendment rights. No guns. No ammunition. No recourse.

This isn’t a bureaucratic technicality. It’s enforced.

Every legal gun sale in Texas requires ATF Form 4473, which explicitly warns that marijuana is still a Schedule I drug federally and that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”

If a TCUP patient answers “no” to the question about marijuana use, they’ve committed a felony punishable by up to five years in federal prison for lying on a government form. If they answer “yes,” they are denied the right to purchase—and could face federal charges simply for possessing the firearms they already legally owned prior to enrollment.

Veterans. Retirees. Rural Texans. People who have carried and relied on a firearm their entire adult lives. These are not criminals. They are patients who did what the state asked: registered for a tightly regulated program to access medicine recommended by their doctor.

And now? They are in the federal government’s crosshairs.

This is not a new law—it’s been on the books since the 1960s—but it has taken on new urgency as SB 3 threatens to eliminate most over-the-counter hemp-derived THC products in Texas, forcing tens of thousands of Texans to either suffer without relief or pivot into TCUP. They’ll be walking straight into a legal trap.

The hypocrisy is staggering. The same political leaders who campaign on defending gun rights and medical freedom are now backing policies that funnel citizens into a government-run marijuana registry—and in doing so, strip them of the very constitutional rights those leaders swore to protect.

No one should have to choose between relief from debilitating pain and the right to protect their home and family. But that’s exactly what Texas patients are facing.

Governor Abbott has the opportunity—and the obligation—to recognize this injustice. By vetoing SB 3, he can protect not only patient access to safe, legal hemp-derived relief, but also the constitutional rights of thousands of Texans who trusted their doctors and their state.

If he signs it, he owns it.

Because when a veteran who served his country with honor is forced to turn in his firearms simply for treating his PTSD with legal, state-approved marijuana, it won’t be Dan Patrick’s name they remember.

It’ll be Greg Abbott’s.

Why Governor Abbott Must Veto SB 3

Written by Jay Maguire on . Posted in Legislative.

 

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is selling Texans a fraud—and calling it reform. Senate Bill 3, his signature attempt to ban nearly all hemp-derived THC products, is nothing short of a full-spectrum assault on personal liberty, small business, patient access, and constitutional rights. With a straight face and a white coat, Patrick is using the language of public health to disguise what is ultimately a prohibitionist power grab.

 

Governor Abbott must veto SB 3. Here’s why:

 

1. They’re Coming for Your Guns, Not Just Your Gummies

 

When a Texan signs up for medical cannabis through TCUP, they’re unknowingly walking into a legal buzzsaw. Overnight, they become a “prohibited person” under federal law—no firearms, no ammo, no recourse. This isn’t some bureaucratic technicality. It’s disarmament disguised as medicine. And Dan Patrick knows damn well what it means. He’s banking on Texans not reading the fine print.

 

2. They’re Yanking Relief Right Off the Shelf

 

For years, Texans have had legal access to over-the-counter hemp products like Delta-8 and Delta-9. These products have helped veterans sleep, cancer patients eat, and working folks manage stress without jumping through hoops. SB 3 would rip those remedies off the shelves and toss them in the trash, forcing everyone into a system they neither asked for nor need.

 

3. They Shut Down the Corner Store and Opened a Toll Booth

 

With SB 3 outlawing OTC hemp and forcing patients into TCUP, Patrick’s plan funnels every Texan into a tightly controlled, DPS-operated monopoly. The state isn’t offering medicine—it’s charging admission. And only a select few companies, cozy with the Capitol crowd, get to collect the toll.

 

4. They’re Pricing Pain Relief Like It’s Platinum

 

Once they’ve shut down your neighborhood shop, they’ll send you to a DPS-licensed dispensary where the price tag is as steep as the red tape. Insurance won’t cover a drop, and the product selection is as sparse as a West Texas rainstorm. The folks who need it most—veterans, seniors, and working-class Texans—are left high and dry.

 

5. They’ll Nail You Whether You Tell the Truth or Not

 

Want to follow the law? Tell the ATF you’re a TCUP patient—and kiss your gun rights goodbye. Want to keep your rifle? Lie on the form—and risk a felony. Patrick’s “compassionate” policy is a legal booby trap, rigged to criminalize honest Texans either way.

6. They’re Using Junk Science to Kick in Your Door

 

Patrick’s DPS has been storming small businesses using discredited lab tests and manipulated data. The Texas Forensic Science Commission warned against it—three times. But instead of fixing the problem, Patrick leaned into it, letting politics override science to justify sweeping raids. That ain’t law enforcement—it’s showbiz with badges.

 

7. They’re Letting Their Buddies Cash In Behind Closed Doors

 

Under the new TCUP rules, investors can stay anonymous. That means lobbyists, donors, and political cronies can rake in the profits while Texans lose access, lose jobs, and lose everything they’ve built. It’s medicine for the rich and raids for the rest.

 

8. They’re Crying Wolf While Texans Suffer

 

Patrick stood on the Senate floor waving horror stories about vomiting, psychosis, and panic attacks. But the facts tell a different tale. These so-called dangers are rare, extreme, and usually tied to long-term heavy use. Meanwhile, Tylenol and Imodium cause more ER visits than cannabinoids ever have. It’s classic Patrick: distract, distort, and divide.

 

—

 

The Verdict: Texans Are Getting Played, Not Protected

 

They’re losing their guns, their medicine, their freedom to choose, and their right to run a business—all so Patrick and his allies can consolidate power, control markets, and cloak prohibition in the language of compassion.

 

This bill is a lie wrapped in a lab coat and tied with campaign cash.

 

Governor Abbott: Veto SB 3. Texans see the game. Don’t play.