Despite strict laws, Texas is awash in intoxicating cannabis
If you want to get high in Texas, your options are almost limitless. This law-and-order state of guns, God and capital punishment is awash in cannabis.
Today, Texas has more than 7,000 cannabis dispensaries, almost twice as many as California. Add to that: 24-hour cannabis delivery, mobile pot trucks, cannabis vending machines, and mail-order cannabis.
"Texas has become known as the biggest open recreational market in the country. 'Open' meaning no regulations," says Nico Richardson, CEO of Texas Originals, which sells only medical marijuana.
It's confusing because recreational marijuana is still illegal in Texas. The socially conservative legislature—which also shuns casino gambling—has voted it down year after year. And yet, with its exploding market for largely unregulated consumable hemp, Texas has inadvertently become the new Republic of THC.
It started in 2018 when Congress passed a farm bill that legalized hemp by declaring it was not marijuana. Marijuana is high in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive component that gets you high if you smoke or eat it. Hemp is low in THC. The next year, Texas and other agriculture states passed their own laws that allowed farmers to grow hemp for paper, clothing and bedding.
Texas lawmakers felt confident they were not legalizing recreational marijuana.
A vending machine inside a VFW post near Austin sells a variety of cannabis products. Veterans, who seek treatment for PTSD, want the Texas legislature to continue to allow consumable cannabis.
"It was meant to give agriculture a new product for the market, specifically in the fiber market," the bill's author, Republican State Senator Charles Perry, said at a committee hearing in May.
Perry, a Baptist deacon from Lubbock, never imagined his law would usher in everything from cannabis-infused grapefruit soda to mango lollipops. But a loophole in the state hemp law had an unintended consequence: today high-potency, across-the-counter cannabis is as plentiful in Texas as Mexican beer.
"I'm disappointed but I'm not surprised," the vexed state senator continued. "When I passed that, I said if you guys screw this up by being cute and getting people high from it, there will be consequences."
Other states that passed farmer-friendly hemp bills are having the same experience as Texas. At present, 11 states—mostly in the South—unwittingly ushered in thriving markets for consumable hemp. But with its major cities and burgeoning population, Texas is the big gorilla.
"The hemp industry in Texas is truly amazing," says Cynthia Cabrera, Chief Strategy Officer for Hometown Hero, the Austin-based cannabis behemoth that has taken advantage of the hemp loophole in Texas and whose products are sold in more than 30 states.
Cynthia Cabrera, Chief Strategy Officer for Hometown Hero, a large Austin-based cannabis business, says their industry is booming and the Texas legislature should further regulate, not ban, THC products.
"I understand that he (Sen. Perry) feels the way that he feels, and yet this industry is here, right? Perhaps it was unintentional and it's not what he wanted, but what we're looking at now is we're talking about taking away 60,000 jobs and billions of dollars in revenue because someone doesn't like it?"
She is referring to a study of the economic impact of hemp-derived cannabis in Texas commissioned by Hometown Hero.
Like 48 other states, Texas permits the sale of medical marijuana, but the law is highly restrictive and the goods are pricey. The Texas Compassionate Use Act permits the sale of marijuana products to qualified consumers with maladies like MS and cancer.
"From day one we have tried to play by the rules," says Richardson, the head of Texas Original, one of only three companies licensed to grow, process and sell medical marijuana in Texas.
"We're getting slaughtered by a completely unregulated, intoxicating hemp industry," he continues.
Richardson calls it "unregulated" because his own independent testing, as well as an investigation by Texas Monthly Magazine, revealed that some hemp consumables in Texas far exceed the legal limit for THC, and some products are contaminated with heavy metals, pesticide and mold. Richardson claims Texas' unintentional hemp marketplace is now larger than any of the 24 states that voted in recreational marijuana.
And there are bad actors. Because there is no age limit in Texas, some hemp houses are brazenly selling to kids after high school lets out.
"There is no recreational market in the country that would allow that (sales to minors). Not one," Richardson says.
John Jowers, Assistant State Adjutant of the Texas VFW,
uses a cannabis vending machine inside a VFW post near Austin. He
supports an open market for cannabis products to treat veterans' PTSD.
Marijuana interest groups actually agree that the Wild West hemp marketplace in Texas needs some adult supervision.
"What we'd like to see is some guard rails on the program to keep it out of the hands of kids and to ensure consumer protection," says Heather Fazio, a board member of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy.
Texas Original's dilemma: the current law won't allow his highly regulated medical marijuana to compete with the free-wheeling consumable hemp market that now has a loyal customer base.
"Don't take hemp-derived consumables away from us, something that works, something that helps," says Mitch Fuller, Chairman of the VFW National Legislative Committee and a veteran of the Iraq War. Like many veterans, he wants access to cheap, potent cannabis to treat his PTSD from combat duty.
"Don't take that option away from us," he continues, "and force us into the Texas compassionate use program if we don't want to use (medical) marijuana."
One consequence of the wide-open cannabis marketplace in Texas is that it's replacing the black market. From 2021 to 2023, Border Patrol seizures of illegal marijuana along the Southwest border plummeted from 71 tons to 20 tons—a drop of 72 percent.
Mexican brickweed—as it's called—is falling out of fashion. With the Mexican drug cartels' reputations for brutality, cannabis consumers are grateful to have legal sources.
El Pasoans who wanted to buy weed, for instance, used to rely on dope dealers who usually obtained mota (marijuana) from across the border in Juarez, Mexico. But since New Mexico legalized recreational pot in 2021 El Pasoans can simply cross the state line and find some 20 upscale dispensaries in the city of Sunland Park.
Dewberry gummies infused with intoxicating cannabis are ready for packaging at Texas Original, one of three companies licensed to sell medical marijuana in the state.
On a visit earlier this year to Dark Matter Cannabis, in Sunland Park, a Texas customer named Danny was picking up some marijuana flower called Blueberry Lemon Haze for a weekend with his girlfriend. He declined to give his last name because New Mexico weed is, technically, illegal in Texas, and as a business owner in El Paso he wants to avoid trouble.
Danny says he won't buy marijuana if he has to get it from a dope dealer. "I don't know where I'm getting it from, who this person is. I don't know what they have," he says. "I've heard a million stories about people getting robbed. But now that we can come in here and just kind of pick anything, it's pretty neat. This is fun now."
When the Texas legislature meets this week for its biennial session, psychoactive hemp is high on the agenda. The cannabis industry is hoping they will tweak the law, like adding age limits, better testing, or increased enforcement. But the powerful, arch-conservative lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, has vowed to pass a new bill that would ban outright all forms of tetrahydrocannabinol. And that would be the end of the Republic of THC.
Ian Benouis thinks that's unlikely. He's a West Point graduate, former Blackhawk helicopter pilot, combat veteran, lawyer and Austin-based activist who helps veterans with PTSD.
"I don't see how they can put the genie back in the bottle," Benouis says. "I just don't see how you go back in time."
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