AUSTIN — A showdown over the fate of the hemp-derived vapes, gummies, flower and edibles market hits the Texas House floor Tuesday, as lawmakers decide whether to kill a burgeoning industry of consumables made with hemp-derived tetrahydrocannabinol — or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.
The fight has been raging for years in the Texas Capitol and across the state, where more than 8,500 retailers have set up shop in vape stores, coffee shops, convenience stores and other venues in an industry that has raked in $8 billion in Texas since they were legalized through a federal loophole in 2019.
It comes as a recent report by a governor’s forensics commission questions the reliability of some state lab tests on the THC levels in hemp-based products – the basis for several raids on hemp shops and one of the core arguments in favor of a ban on them.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is on the warpath against the retailers, with the Senate backing a full ban as one of the Houston Republican’s priorities for the session.
On the eve of the vote, Patrick released an 8-minute video of footage from the bipartisan Senate floor vote and committee hearings. In it, Patrick vows not to leave Austin until a ban is passed.
“There’s an important vote coming up for the members of the Texas House,” Patrick said in the video. “Many of you are watching this video, and many of you are concerned about THC, how it’s being sold to schoolchildren all across Texas. This is poisonous THC. No regulations whatsoever. …
“I’m asking the Texas House to stand up to the forces that are trying to have you stop this ban.”
Texas House leaders, meanwhile, are signaling early resistance to a total ban on all hemp-derived products and have put forth a plan to curtail and regulate the industry.
The critical vote will come on an amendment that will replace the language in the House version with the total ban enacted by the Senate, carried by House Republican Caucus Chairman Tom Oliverson, an anesthesiologist from Cypress.
“Self medication is the first step of treatment failure,” Oliverson said. “I was here in 2019 and none of us voted to legalize marijuana. It’s clear that this gray zone has established that, essentially, because the reactive ingredient is the same. And that isn’t what we voted for, and it’s not good for the state.”
Tuesday’s floor vote on Senate Bill 3, by Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, is among the more highly anticipated debates of the session after hundreds showed up for committee hearings that lasted into the early morning hours to debate the merits and risks of low-dose THC.
It also comes less than a month after law enforcement seized nearly $5 million in cash, as well as vehicles, jewelry and firearms after an investigation into a chain of North Texas shops in Dallas and Kaufman counties.
The report – published in April by a governor-appointed commission charged with investigating accredited forensic laboratories for professional negligence or misconduct – found that some labs test vapes confiscated from customers or retailers using methods that can falsely inflate the amount of THC found in the products.
An emailed request for comment to Texas Department of Public Safety media officers was not immediately returned late Monday.
Attorneys for the shop owners have said the shops were operating legally.
Industry advocates, who have pushed for age limits and regulations that protect them from unscrupulous or inaccurate labs and manufacturers, say the raids are politically motivated to ratchet up the panic surrounding the hemp retailers.
“The truth is, Patrick manufactured a moral panic to kill an industry he doesn’t like, and SB 3 is the weapon he’s using to do it,” said Jay Maguire, a long-time Texas political consultant and co-founder of Cannabis Retailers Alliance for Texas.
Ban vs. Regulate
The legislative fight on Tuesday promises to be close.
Oliverson’s amendment – ground zero for the debate – was making the rounds on Monday for lawmakers’ signatures of support and closing ground fast.
“I lost count at 50,” he said late in the afternoon.
Either version will need 76 votes to pass the House. If the House doesn’t pass the ban, Patrick has threatened to do what he can to push Abbott into a special session – which the lieutenant governor could potentially accomplish by killing other priority legislation that the governor wants passed, although he has not threatened that directly.
Supporters of the ban say that THC should only be legal in Texas for those who need it for medical needs, administered through health professionals, and can qualify through the state’s narrow medical marijuana program, known as the Texas Compassionate Use Program. They say the retailers sell products that are often illegally high in THC and accuse them of selling to minors.
Advocates for the ban included parents who said their children had suffered psychosis after consuming synthetic THC products.
Opponents say prohibition would be a disappointing overreach that defies Texas’ pro-business values and allows residents access to life-changing products. They urge lawmakers to avoid killing an industry that has created about 50,000 jobs, according to market research.
Oliverson and other Republicans say the key to helping those who need THC for pain management and other conditions is expanding TCUP. Last week, the Texas House voted to do that, overwhelmingly passing a bill that would make the program broadly available to veterans, doubling the number of conditions that qualify for the program and raising the number of dispensaries from 3 to 15.
That bill, sponsored by the same lawmaker carrying the House plan for the hemp retailers, still faces an uphill battle in the Senate – which passed its own, much smaller TCUP bill that raised the number of dispensaries and made it easier for them to stay in business, but didn’t expand the program to include more people.
The 2019 loophole
Hemp and marijuana plants are varieties of cannabis. In Texas, products containing THC from marijuana are illegal except for the medical program.
Most THC products derived from hemp plants, however, are legal because of a 2019 state law that allows the farming and commercialization of hemp with trace amounts of THC.
Because the law was written for farmers, not retailers, it did not offer the restrictions present in other states’ consumable hemp programs, including strict third-party testing requirements and age limits on purchases.
The 2019 legislation limited the amount of delta-9 THC in hemp plants and products to no more than 0.3% by weight but did not place limits for any other hemp derivatives.
The law removed hemp from the state’s Controlled Substances Act, effectively legalizing all of its derivatives without potency limits on most of them.
In 2023, some lawmakers attempted to ban intoxicating hemp-based products but were unsuccessful.
Bringing the heat
Law enforcement has been at odds with retailers over the legality of the products because some tested after being sold contained illegally high levels of THC and products have been found in the possession of those younger than 21.
In August 2024, law enforcement agencies launched a series of aggressive, coordinated raids on nine hemp and vape shops in Allen, arresting six people, including 70-year-old Sabhie Khan, the longtime manager of Allen Smoke & Vape.
Prosecutors alleged the stores were selling products containing THC in excess of the state’s legal 0.3% threshold, claiming that some products tested as high as 78% THC. Business owners denied the allegations, pointing to certificates of analysis from DEA-registered, ISO-accredited laboratories confirming that their products complied with state and federal hemp laws.
Similar raids were carried out the same week in Denton. No charges were filed in several of those cases.
Then, in April 2025, another operation led by DPS targeted eight Sky Rise and ZRD Smoke Shops in Dallas and Kaufman counties. Authorities said they seized $4.8 million in cash, including all of the cash in the stores, at the owner’s homes, and in the bank accounts associated with the stores, personal and unrelated business accounts belonging to the owners — along with vehicles, jewelry, and firearms – and accused the businesses in public statements of trafficking controlled substances masquerading as hemp.
No charges have been filed.
Attorneys representing the accused retail operators have maintained their clients followed the law, relied on certified lab testing, and ran legitimate, taxpaying businesses. These raids, they argue, represent a pattern of government overreach driven by flawed science and political motivations.
“Dan Patrick built his campaign for SB 3 on lies,” Maguire said. “He pointed to raids as proof that retailers were out of control—knowing full well those raids were based on fraudulent lab results from a discredited facility DPS handpicked to give them what they wanted. He smeared legal businesses, claiming they were selling poison to kids, while ignoring that those very businesses were licensed, inspected, and using DEA-registered labs. Now he’s forcing the House to vote on a bill justified by illegal actions, not evidence—expanding DPS power with seven new criminal penalties and asking lawmakers to validate a state-led assault on Texans who followed the law..”
San Marcos-based attorney David Sergi, who opposes the bill and is working with the owners, has said that laboratories that law enforcements work with to test seized cannabis-based products “can make a legal sample look illegal.”
The April report by the Texas Forensic Science Commission seemed to, in part, support Sergi’s criticism of testing methods.
The report was in response to a December complaint in which a person argued to the commission that the method of testing at a regional DPS laboratory in Tyler led to a felony possession conviction.
The commission found that some forensic labs, including the Tyler facility, do not “use analytical techniques that are able to distinguish” THCA from THC in non-plant products — such as vapes and edibles.
It recommended state forensic laboratories that do not have the ability to differentiate the two chemical compounds to include notes “expressing the limitation” of their testing methods when reporting their findings.
Some methods, such as “gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy,” can convert THCA into THC, thereby inflating the total concentration of the illegal substance in the results, said Peter Stout, president and CEO of the Houston Forensic Science Center.
Stout, who said he consulted with the commission on the April report, said using the gas chromatography testing method for plant material is not problematic. The “gray area” in the legal guidance is related to non-plant samples.
“When we’re talking about these manufactured products like a vape, the way the law exists currently is really vague and confusing,” Stout said. “It’s messing everybody up.”
Sergi, who represents an Allen smoke shop owner whose business was raided last year by police, described the findings in the report as a victory for his clients in the hemp industry.
“It undermines most, if not all, of the allegations that have been made about [hemp-based] products,” Sergi said. “It shows [law enforcement departments] are relying on shoddy testing.”
Sergi said he supports some regulations on cannabis-based products, including age-based restrictions. The ban proposed in SB 3 would devastate a “maturing and growing” industry,” he added.
“We’re eliminating a lot of the bad actors,” Sergi said. “Leave our good clients alone, give us reasonable regulation and oversight so there are safe products and they’re not sold to kids. Let people make their choices.”
Tuesday’s fight
While Patrick has been visiting smoke shops hoping to find underage customers and vowing to accept nothing less than the Senate’s ban on the consumable hemp market in the bill’s original form, the chairman of the bipartisan House State Affairs Committee will present something starkly different to the Texas House on Tuesday.
The legislation by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, would save the state’s consumable hemp market from a total ban while reducing it to edibles and nonsynthetic, smokable low-dose flower buds made with hemp grown only in Texas – the market that was initially supposed to benefit from the 2019 farm bill.
Counties could opt out and elect to go entirely “dry” with no hemp sales at all through elections similar to those allowed for alcohol sales, and the entire hemp program would be moved from state health officials’ purview and placed under the direction of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
The House version of the bill could still wipe out half of the value of products on the market today. But it stops short of killing the industry altogether, allowing hemp specialty stores but banning the products from being sold in gas stations and vape shops.
The bill bans all forms of smokable hemp except low-dose hemp flower — not high enough to be psychoactive — that’s grown naturally in Texas. It also bans hemp vapes, including those made with THCA and other derivatives.
The stores may sell tinctures and edibles, including gummies and drinks. The bill bans sales to customers under 21, requires child-resistant packaging, prohibits packaging that markets to children and includes other testing and regulatory requirements.
Taxes gathered on the products would be divided like this: Half to the TABC, one-quarter to accredited crime labs and the last quarter to opioid narcotic response services by law enforcement.
The Senate passed SB 3 as a total ban in early March on a 24-7 vote, one day after a video surfaced of Patrick going into a THC shop near a middle school in South Austin — the latest in a growing series of personal investigations the lieutenant governor is doing this session. A shop employee is heard asking for his identification as the store requires customers to be at least 21.
Perry’s version of the bill would criminalize the possession and manufacture of intoxicating legal products currently sold in smoke shops, convenience stores, breweries, coffee shops and online retailers.
Possession of the products would be a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000. Manufacturing them would be a third-degree felony, punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Retailers would have until January to comply with the new law, which would not target the sale of the products containing cannabidiol (CBD) or cannabigerol (CBG), two nonintoxicating hemp derivatives.
It would ban anything other than CBG and CBD. That includes all other consumable hemp products, such as cannabinol (CBN), which is also nonintoxicating and popular for uses such as sleep aids and anxiety.
CBD is federally approved for treating a form of childhood epilepsy, and medical evidence suggests it could treat anxiety disorders, pain, insomnia and possibly inflammation.
Perry has promised to deliver “the toughest THC ban in the nation.”
