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3 days ago
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Texas Legislature OKs expansion of medical marijuana program as THC ban heads to Abbott
After days of contentious back-and-forth between the two Texas legislative chambers, the Senate late Tuesday night approved an expansion to the state's medical marijuana program. House Bill 46, by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, will expand the Texas Compassionate Use Program fourfold, upping the number of available dispensary licenses from the current three to 12 statewide. It passed the Senate unanimously after the House and Senate struck a deal to include chronic pain, terminal disease and hospice care as qualifying conditions for a cannabis prescription. The expanded medical program also adds aerosol cannabis products like vapes, along with patches and lotions. More: As Texas weighs banning consumable hemp containing THC, Austin shop sees 'stock buying' The deal marks a détente between the House and Senate on the subject as a sweeping ban on THC products is on its way to the governor's desk. The Senate had stripped House provisions for chronic pain as a qualifying condition for the Compassionate Use Program, drawing fierce blowback from House members who later pushed for the condition to be reinstated. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Senate want to ban intoxicating hemp products — which have been legal in Texas since 2019 — through Senate Bill 3, which was passed by both chambers in recent weeks. The House's version of the proposal instead called for increased regulation of THC product sales, but the upper chamber's version of the bill won the day. It's not yet clear if Gov. Greg Abbott plans to sign the bill. In a news conference Wednesday, during which Patrick displayed an array of THC products and sharply criticized members of the media for coverage of the THC ban and resulting inter-chamber conflict, the bill's author praised the TCUP expansion, which he said will still serve those who use THC medicinally while curbing dangerous hemp products. 'We promised on the front end, when we get rid of the bad stuff, we'll find a way to thread the needle for those that have found benefit,' said Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock. 'I think it's the relief we promised. … We're expanding the things that we believe are legitimate needs that can be met through a responsible delivery system.' This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Legislature OKs expansion of medical marijuana program, THC ban
Yahoo
4 days ago
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Texas likely to expand medical marijuana program eligibility amid looming hemp ban
The Texas Senate advanced a bill Tuesday that will expand the conditions eligible for the state's medical marijuana program, including chronic pain and Crohn's disease, and allow for smokable products to be sold by prescription. House Bill 46 by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, which had seven amendments, will allow patients in the state's medical marijuana program to use products like cannabis patches, lotions, and prescribed inhalers and vaping devices. The House already approved the bill 122-21 earlier this month, and the Senate gave it unanimous approval Tuesday. If it becomes law, the list of qualifying conditions would also expand to include chronic pain and terminal or hospice care. The next step for this bill is for Gov. Greg Abbott to sign it before it becomes law. Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, clarified that those who will be eligible under the chronic pain designation are most likely those who are already prescribed an opiate for it. 'When you get an opiate, that is the highest level of pain you can get in our bodies, right? The medical board threaded that needle and we are using that definition,' he said. 'There wasn't a legislative definition, but there was a medical one, and we tied it to that.' The bill would also allow licensed dispensers to open more satellite locations, which supporters say is necessary to prevent the industry from collapsing, and adds nine dispensers, pushing the total to 12. Perry said the first three dispensers will be picked from the previously submitted list, and then it will be opened up to the public. In Texas, licensed medical cannabis providers must house all operations — including cannabis cultivation, processing, extracting, manufacturing, testing, and dispensing — under one roof. State regulations also prohibit inventory storage of medical cannabis products in multiple locations, so products must be distributed from the central dispensary. Any prescriptions scheduled for pickup outside the central dispensary must be driven daily to and from the pickup location — sometimes thousands of miles round-trip. This has made their products more expensive and limited where the medical marijuana program can reach, hampering the small medical cannabis market in Texas. House Bill 46 is meant to correct some of this problem by allowing medical marijuana distributors to store their products in various satellite locations instead of having to drive across the state to return the product to the original dispensary every day. 'This should help alleviate some of the costs because they will be able to store it in those distribution centers,' said Perry. However, the most significant potential change would be allowing smokable marijuana products, such as vapes, into the program, helping to match the popularity of products found in the hemp industry. The Texas medical program can currently only sell gummies, lozenges, topicals, beverages, and tinctures, as smoking or vaping products have not been approved. Many hemp products, which are unregulated and sold more freely in smoke shops, also give the same high as medical marijuana, but are cheaper for consumers, and don't require a visit to a medical professional for pre-approval to purchase. This ease of access has pretty much made the medical marijuana program irrelevant, according to the medical marijuana industry. Texas lawmakers recently passed a bill that will essentially wipe out the hemp market, and the blowback has been noticed. 'What we have done this session, members, is eradicate bad actors who are poisoning our community, children and adults, and making a massive profit off people,' said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, during the hearing for HB 46. 'We have wiped them out and are now building one of the biggest Compassionate Use Programs in the country.' Some of the most vigorous opposition to the all-out ban on hemp products has come from those who use it for medical purposes. Veterans, parents of children with mental health or physical disabilities, and the elderly spoke to lawmakers this year about the importance of having easy access to hemp products, not the medical marijuana program. 'I want to reiterate since we got so many calls. This body has always made a commitment to our veterans. But we also have a commitment to our kids, and it's to keep them safe from narcotics that they shouldn't be doing until they are 25 and under a medical setting,' said Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, during the hearing Tuesday night. 'Never under any terms did we intend for a child to go to the convenience store and get a vape pen. We had to grab the reins of a pretty strong horse. We all had to do that, and we all got grief for it, but we never authorized it in the first place.' First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
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Texas House OKs bill to boost power grid protection, strengthen ERCOT's emergency authority
A proposal to grant regulators increased oversight of electric generation and transmission, along with equipping the state power grid's manager with tools to better forecast energy needs, passed the House on Tuesday. The legislation is now heading back to the Senate to review the lower chamber's changes to the bill. Senate Bill 6 is the Legislature's latest effort to reduce the risk of widespread outages during peak demand times by allowing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state power grid, to cut power to large-scale consumers during an emergency. That should encourage power-hungry operations like data centers to develop their own backup systems, said Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, who sponsored the bill in the House. "You certainly don't want large-load customers that sometimes are data-centered for military operations, or whatever, to just be without power when there's an emergency," King said during the floor debate. According to the bill analysis, SB 6 focuses on four main objectives: Ensuring that transmission costs are properly allocated. Establishing measures to protect grid reliability. Promoting transparency and credibility in load forecasting. Protecting residential customers from outages by requiring large loads to share the load-shed obligation during shortages. More: Renewables bailed out Texas' grid earlier this month. Now the GOP wants to restrict them In March, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told a congressional committee that Texas set an all-time peak demand record of 85,508 gigawatts in the summer of 2023 — a record he expects the state will break sooner than later because, in part, large-scale consumers are bringing their operations to the Lone Star State. "Texas has become a magnet for industries that require increasing amounts of electricity, from semiconductor plants to data centers, broad industrial growth and large-scale industrial electrification in the Permian Basin," Vegas told the House subcommittee on energy. Under the bill, ERCOT would be able to expedite connecting large consumers to the grid, provided they install on-site backup power sources. The House and Senate versions of SB 6 are different, so unless the Senate agrees with the House's changes, a conference committee will have to reconcile the two versions into a final bill. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas House OKs power grid-protection bill, boosts ERCOT's authority
Yahoo
5 days ago
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Bill that would increase oversight of Texas' largest energy users gets initial approval in Texas House
The Texas House gave initial approval Monday to a bill that would give Texas more oversight over energy transactions between power generators and the state's largest consumers of electricity. Senate Bill 6 also proposes new ways to assess the amount of electricity that is available to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the main manager of the state's grid. The bill now returns to the Senate. Legislators in the upper chamber must agree to the changes made to the bill before it goes to Abbott. The bill would give ERCOT the power to oversee energy transactions between power generators and large consumers that don't involve the state's grid. ERCOT would also have the authority to cut their power and use it during an emergency. State Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, the bill's author, has said his bill will allow the state to better manage electric supply at times of high demand. Power generators and companies said the new oversight measures proposed by the bill would be excessive for a market accustomed to the free trade of energy without requirements imposed by the state. They have said the bill could discourage companies from doing business in Texas. King said the new rules are not meant to do so. 'I think what this bill is seeking to do is set out clear rules where large load customers that want to come to Texas know what they're getting when they get here,' said state Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, who sponsored the bill in the lower chamber. The bill would also require companies to disclose whether they have other projects in the state. Sen. Phil King said this would give ERCOT information to better predict and meet energy demands in the future more accurately. That's necessary to determine the state's electricity needs without overbuilding, which would result in higher rates for everyday consumers, he said. Texas will need almost double the electricity it consumes today to meet a demand driven mainly by data centers and the oil and gas industry, a demand that ERCOT President Pablo Vegas said the grid, in its current state, is capable of meeting when that demand arrives. Lawmakers added and removed some provisions from the bill during a debate in the House on Monday. One amendment got rid of a previously accepted proposal by state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, which gave new large businesses in Texas the option to get electricity faster from the grid if they let ERCOT reduce their power consumption at will. Another amendment approved Monday, introduced by state Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, would inject any excess electricity back into the grid and use any money from selling that energy to lower water bills for electricity ratepayers. First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
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Is THC in Texas going up in smoke? House OKs ban, averting showdown with Senate
The Texas House on Wednesday evening, after delays that covered the better part of two days, embraced a ban on the sale and consumption of intoxicating hemp products, avoiding a potential clash with the Senate in the final days of the legislative session. "We are not banning hemp, we are banning high," said state Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Houston-area Republican lawmaker and physician who essentially rewrote the House's version of Senate Bill 3 on the fly. "What we're doing here is correcting a problem that was created in 2019 where we essentially created a pathway whereby people could sell drugs in corner stores across our state," Oliverson said. The Texas Legislature in 2019, hoping to boost agriculture, established the Texas Industrial Hemp Program and authorized the production, manufacture and sale of industrial hemp crops and products, including those with low levels of THC. The bill opened a market for consumable hemp products with up to 0.3% THC. The Senate, at the urging of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, passed a sweeping ban in March as a way to stop the proliferation of "consumable hemp products and the hemp-derived cannabinoids" contained in snack foods, candies, beverages and smokeable products. Patrick, the three-term Republican who leads the Senate, made the bill a top priority for the 2025 legislative session and hinted at extending lawmakers' time in Austin if it wasn't passed before the June 2 adjournment. And that might have come to pass under the original House version of the bill, which took a regulatory approach over an outright ban. That is what came out of the chamber's State Affairs Committee in a rewrite spearheaded by its chairman, Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian. But once the bill was set for a floor debate Tuesday, Oliverson began circulating an amendment to bring it in line with the goals laid out by Patrick and the Senate. That prompted some behind-the-scenes legislative maneuvering, reportedly including seeking Senate concessions on a separate school-funding bill which was stalled in exchange for the House's willingness to bend on hemp. But King's approach was not without support, both in the House and among veterans. Dave Walden, the incoming state commander of Texas Veterans of Foreign War, wrote in an op-ed that he and many of his fellow former service members who have served in combat have found that the hemp products targeted by the legislation have proven to be life-savers. More: What's the status of marijuana in Texas? An explainer on THC, CBD, Delta-8 and more "Lt. Governor Patrick has called these products 'poison,' but for many veterans, they've been the antidote to a system that was slowly poisoning us with endless prescriptions," wrote Walden, who was deployed to Iraq and other areas of conflict between 2001 and 2012. "When I hear rhetoric comparing hemp to 'bath salts' or other dangerous street drugs, I cannot reconcile it with my experience or that of my fellow veterans who have found healing through these products," Walden wrote. Oliverson, an anesthesiologist, said that under his measure, veterans would still have access to approved medications containing THC, the primary psychoactive component in the cannabis plant. "People are currently self-medicating by getting this THC that is potentially not very well-regulated," he said. "What I'm getting to is ... you have to have a medical professional that's overseeing this program and regulating at what point how many milligrams is the right milligrams for each individual. "I'm sure this won't shock anybody in the room, but there are no miracle cures out there." King voted against Oliverson's amendment, likening a ban on THC to the ill-fated prohibition of alcohol a century ago. He ultimately voted for the final bill even after the amendment was added to it by a lopsided House vote. The final vote advancing the bill was 95-34. State Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who leads his party's House caucus, said the amended bill goes too far and might do more harm than good for veterans and others. "The overwhelming majority of veterans are aggressively supporting legalization, supporting keeping the law in a regulated state," Wu said. "Texans as a whole do not want something that they've had access to for the last five years (to be banned). Something that they have enjoyed recreationally, and that has helped them medically. "They have told you that loudly and repeatedly. They have called your offices; they have written letters. They have done everything they could," Wu said. More: As Texas weighs banning consumable hemp containing THC, Austin shop sees 'stock buying' Republican Rep. David Lowe of North Richland Hills said that as an Amy military police officer who was deployed to Afghanistan he supports the measure as amended by Oliverson. "Let me be clear, there are benefits to hemp products for some individuals," Lowe said. "But as someone who has lived through the darkness onward and its aftermath, I say sincerely, stop using veterans like me as a vehicle to push your unregulated influence. There's a difference between compassion and exploitation." Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas warned that a THC ban would only push consumers of the now-legal products to underground sources. "You're going to be driving people into the black market," Anchia said. "You're going to criminalize veterans. You're going to be criminalizing young people. ... You're going to be criminalizing your neighbor." On Monday night, just hours before the House originally was set to vote, Patrick posted an 8-minute video on social media aimed at grassroots Republicans to put pressure on members to add teeth to the lower chamber's version of the bill. "We must ban THC," Patrick said in the video posted to X. "We can't regulate it. We don't have enough police to check every store when there are 8-9,000 of them. 'I've been here for 17 years at the Texas Capitol, 10 years as your lieutenant governor and I've never been more passionate about anything. I'm not going to leave Austin until we get this done.' Because the House's version, even as amended, differs from what the Senate passed, SB 3 must return to the upper chamber to consider the changes. The Senate can either accept what the House sends or request a conference committee to reconcile the differences. Staff writer Bayliss Wagner contributed to this report. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas House OKs THC ban, sidestepping potential clash with Senate
