Texas Legislature Begins Special Session With Hemp THC In The Balance

With June’s veto of the Texas legislature’s hemp THC ban, Governor Greg Abbott has pushed the Lone Star State into the center of the debate around THC in the U.S. Along with the veto, the governor called for a special legislative session which began yesterday, aimed at creating regulations for the hemp industry.

For now, the only guidance available for how the Texas legislature may proceed comes from a memo attached to Governor Abbott’s veto. In it, he recommended restricting sales to those 21 and older, child-proofing packaging, banning marketing and branding that could appeal to children, and preventing sales on Sundays. These stipulations were present in a bill to regulate hemp that failed in the legislature and are seen as reasonable by much of the hemp-derived industry. Hemp is a roughly $5 billion business in the Lone Star State.

In a related development, Democratic Texas State Representative Nicole Collier has introduced a new bill that would provide amnesty for hemp consumers who unintentionally purchased cannabis. Collier’s bill, House Bill 42, would protect consumers from prosecution for possessing “a product that purports by the product’s label to contain a consumable hemp product that is authorized under state or federal law” and was purchased “from a retailer the person reasonably believed was authorized to sell a consumable hemp product.

Tagged : cannabis, Texas Hemp

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