Texas medical marijuana program expansion on the verge of becoming law

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A watered-down expansion of Texas’ medical marijuana program is headed for Gov. Greg Abbott’s office after State House voted to accept significant changes to the bill before the Senate.

House bill 1535 Expands Texas Compassionate Use Program eligibility to people with cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Senate removed a provision that would have allowed any Texan with chronic pain to access medical marijuana.

The bill also caps the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient that produces a high effect, at 1%. This is only a nominal increase from the 0.5% allowed by current law. The bill passed by the House capped the amount of THC at 5%, still far lower than most states that have licensed the plant for medicinal purposes.

The measure is not what many defenders had hoped for. Her godfather, State Representative Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, told the House her Senate counterparts were unwilling to budge. She reluctantly asked the House to approve the overhaul, rather than reject the amendments nailed down in the upper house and send the bill to a conference committee.

An overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House voted last month to send HB 1535 to the Senate, where he languished in legislative purgatory for more than two weeks. Last week, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick referred the proposal to the Senate State Affairs Committee, after weeks of outcry from lawyers who said Patrick refused to hold the bill.

State Senator Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, introduced a committee surrogate that deleted many of the bill’s provisions. Advocates and industry leaders had hoped to overhaul a system they said is riddled with tough rules, red tape and cumbersome barriers that have made the program largely inaccessible to those it was meant to help.

“As a pharmacist and as a physician, I have no doubts that our limited medical program, with proper rules and oversight, is the right course for Texas patients seeking symptom relief,” Schwertner said when ‘he presented his changes.

Fewer than 6,000 Texans have signed up for the compassionate use program. About 2 million people are eligible under current law.

Heather Fazio, Texans director for responsible marijuana policy, lamented that the proposal in its final form was “unreasonably restrictive,” despite broad bipartisan support for cannabis legalization. A February poll from the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Tribune found that 60% of Texans said small or large amounts of marijuana for any purpose should be legal.

“While we are happy to see the compassionate use program grow, it is disappointing to see Texas progress as other states, like Alamaba for example, move forward with real medical cannabis programs,” Fazio said. . “It does so little and we wish [lawmakers] were doing more.

Patrick in 2019 also expressed reservations about a similar expansion of medical marijuana. A spokesperson for Patrick said at the time that the lieutenant governor, who has the final say on bills considered and the committees to which they are referred, “strongly opposes the weakening of laws against marijuana”.

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