AUSTIN __ As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott considers whether to allow the state to ban gummies, vapes and edibles made with tetrahydrocannabinol — or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – he’ll dive into months of passionate arguments from parents, veterans, business owners and police.
Many of them are his loyal voters.
But what the Republican governor likely won’t need to worry about as he tackles what is arguably one of the most anticipated decisions of his time in office – not to mention the enormous rift it has created among the grassroots conservatives who have kept him there for over a decade?
His political future, longtime observers of Texas elections say – one that is protected by, if not cemented in, policy credentials, popularity, strategy, loyalty and fundraising prowess.
“No one’s going to beat Abbott, regardless of what he does. He’s going to be the governor for as long as he wants to be governor,” said Bill Miller, a veteran political consultant and lobbyist in Austin. “So this is a personal decision about him, and what he feels, and what he thinks is best for Texas. It won’t affect his political future in any way whatsoever.”
Abbott has until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, June 22, to decide whether to strike down the wildly controversial ban. Earlier this week, he dropped the first hint on what he might do.
In a nutshell: Still working on it.
“I haven’t tackled this one yet,” Abbott said during a conversation with reporters in his office on Wednesday. “I’m going to give it the thoughtful consideration from every angle that it deserves.”
He’ll consider the weight of hundreds of hours of testimony on Senate Bill 3, which lawmakers passed in May to criminalize the sale, manufacture and possession of the hemp-based products that have proliferated under more than 8,500 retailers in an $8 billion industry over the past five years.
Abbott may even read the petition delivered to his office on June 3 with 118,000 signatures of people opposed to the ban, who include veterans and hemp shop owners.
And he almost certainly got a glimpse of the press conference a few days before that, featuring Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hurling a bag of THC-laced snacks at reporters, demanding that the media “get on board” and make sure the ban, one of his priorities for the session, passes.
That was 24 hours after it had already been sent to Abbott.
Exactly two weeks later, Abbott paused.
“There are people on both sides of the issue that have concerns, and those concerns need to be looked at,” Abbott told reporters on Wednesday.
Deciding his next move on the THC ban is easily the biggest conundrum to emerge from this year’s legislative session, and one that has fired up residents of all stripes across the state.
“It’s the most interesting decision of the session, in my opinion,” Miller said. “It’s just one of those things that comes along once in a while that’s really, really significant, and it will be remembered forever and a day. It has totally permeated political discussions. I run into it in the most random ways from the most random people, and it happens over and over. And the questions, and the randomness, and the frequency of it speaks to how significant it is right now as a political issue.”
A newer issue for Abbott
The fight has raged in Texas since low-potency hemp and hemp products, containing less than .03% delta-9 THC, were legalized through a federal loophole in 2019 in order to boost agricultural production.
The products were not cut out of the bill, but not regulated, either — resulting in massive growth of the industry without guardrails to protect both consumers and sellers.
The issue of medicinal or recreational THC – whether derived from hemp or marijuana – has not been a headliner for Abbott, who has kept quiet on the subject even as attention on the issue of unregulated hemp has grown exponentially in the past year.
His powerfully loyal base, with whom he generally is in lockstep, isn’t consistent on the issue: Police and parents want the ban. Veterans and small businesses don’t. Is he tough on drugs and crime or is he pro-small business? Does he support families? Veterans? Kids?
Polls consistently show that the majority of Texans would rather see THC become more legal or accessible in some way.
But solving the problem of an out-of-control hemp market while maintaining the access that voters seem to want is murkier. The path forward is fraught with tales of kids in possession of products that can be purchased at convenience stores, jailed customers who thought they were buying something legal, store owners inadvertently stocking illegal products and addictions that lead to suicide.
Now, whether Texas should ban THC rests solely in Abbott’s hands. No wonder he’s taking a moment, political experts say.
“The THC ban is one of those surprise issues that resonates easily with voters and can catch politicians off guard. It wasn’t a planned kind of policy choice for Governor Abbott,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, an author, expert on gubernatorial politics and a University of Houston political scientist. “It got, to some degree, kind of thrown at his doorstep. And there is a political risk for a governor being the public face of an issue, which might prove to be unpopular. ”
For Abbott, though, that risk is minimal, Rottinghaus and others say.
Abbott is a skilled fundraiser, a close friend of President Donald Trump, and he enters the primary election cycle with a handful of fresh legislative successes, including a new billion-dollar private school voucher program, a top issue for religious conservatives.
On issues like border security and immigration, gun rights, voting, bail reform, LGBTQ issues, abortion and property taxes, Abbott has plenty to offer the part of his conservative base who will wind up on the opposite side of his THC position, political scientists said.
“There’s pressure on him, but I think if we put the THC issue within the larger political context, Republicans got a lot of wins,” said Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy analyst at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. “I don’t know that the THC issue measures up as far as those other kinds of big-ticket items on the Republican side. I don’t know the extent that he would suffer serious political consequences. Republicans aren’t going to vote for a Democrat based on this one particular issue.”
If they’re not going to do that, conservatives who are angry over whatever decision Abbott makes on THC would have to find someone to replace him in a Republican primary. The most a challenger like that would do, Rottinghaus said, is force him to be more conscious of his campaign spending and push him even further to the right, as spats with his base have done in the past.
So far, Abbott is looking at an election season without a challenger who has any realistic chance of beating him in the March primaries. At the end of December 2024, he had nearly $70 million in his campaign coffers.
“It would be nearly impossible to beat the governor in a heads-up electoral race, right? He’s got universal name ID, he’s got a massive war chest, he’s got Donald Trump’s ear, and he’s coming off probably his most successful legislative session,” Rottinghaus said. “It’s going to be a real challenge to unseat him, but it doesn’t mean it won’t make his life harder.”
Abbott won his last GOP primary with more than 66% of the vote – after his COVID mask mandates threatened to alienate him from the GOP, perhaps his most public split from his traditionally conservative base.
During that 2022 election, Abbott’s pandemic policies prompted a run at him from Don Huffines, an outspoken conservative who barely chipped at Abbott’s support base in the primary but forced him to be more vocal about right-leaning policies during what should have been an easy race, Rottinghaus said.
“The governor learned the hard way that making the base mad can destabilize one’s political support. It didn’t cause him to lose, but he definitely felt a pinch and a bit more pressure than he would have otherwise,” Rottinghaus said. “To some degree, I think the policy issues that he chose – including the border and vouchers – was a direct result of this perception that he wasn’t conservative enough.”
A personal statement
As for what Abbott will do, few would lay money on either outcome.
Patrick has only said that he has spoken with Abbott and “I know his heart.”
Miller, a longtime friend of the governor’s, shrugs: “I have no idea.”
Abbott, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, says only: “This is a time when I will once again put on my judicial hat and weigh arguments from both sides and figure out a pathway forward.”
Some on the ground, however, are catching signals.
Aside from his lack of public fervor on the topic, Abbott’s let-me-think-about-it response was the first real sign of hope for opponents of the ban, who seized on his reticence at the opportunity to speak out against it.
His remarks were also a departure from the loud certainty and condemnation lobbed repeatedly at the industry by Patrick and state Sen. Charles Perry, the Lubbock Republican who crafted the 2019 bill.
Both have sworn they would pass the strongest THC ban in the country and shut down the retailers they accuse of taking advantage of an unregulated market, selling dangerous products to children, and ruining lives with their carelessness and greed.
Abbott chose to watch the Texas Legislature battle it out and didn’t press either way, leaving the issue off a list of emergency items he released in January that included vouchers and property tax cuts.
The ban – which appeared to have been gaining momentum in the preceding months with mass raids on hemp shops and passionate testimony of mothers whose children had fallen victim to THC products – met a chillier-than-expected reception when it came time to write the new policy.
That was particularly true in the Texas House, which was often described this session as the most conservative in the history of a legislature that has been under the control of Republicans for three decades.
Lawmakers seemed to agree with Patrick that the current unregulated situation, in which the law didn’t even ban the sale of products to minors, could not continue. Where they differed was how to fix it.
While 95 state representatives voted in favor of the ban – including a handful of Democrats – a sizable chunk of those Republicans preferred an alternative plan that would have saved the market, while shrinking and regulating it.
When that failed to cross the finish line, the total ban passed – with many lawmakers saying they voted for it because it was the only alternative to doing nothing.
If Abbott vetoes the ban, as did fellow Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis with a similar GOP-driven attempt in Florida a year ago, he also has the option of ordering lawmakers into a special session to find a solution that doesn’t involve decimating the industry entirely.
That would give him some political cover on both sides of the fight. Whatever he does, experts said, where he stands on THC in Texas is likely to become one of the issues that defines his political legacy – even if it doesn’t affect his election results.
“What it really means is, it’s a chance to stand alone at the top of the pack of the big three,” Miller said, referring to Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows. “It’s not just a Patrick issue now. It’s now one of the two top issues in the state legislative session, and that gives it particular interest for a lot of people, politically or otherwise. …
“So, it’s a statement he gets a chance to make personally, one way or the other.”
