CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Small business owners in the hemp industry are rejoicing over the news that Governor Greg Abbott has vetoed SB 3, giving them the opportunity to keep their doors open for now.
3News has introduced you to Rene Pena before. He’s not only the owner of Panacea Hash Garden, but he’s an advocate for the power to choose natural medicine.
Pena said he woke up to text messages this morning he thought were just a dream.
“I’ve never been a supporter of Abbott but ill praise him today,” Pena said. “He stood up for small business owners. He stood up for Texans.”
After the bill was introduced earlier this year, Pena made the business decision to relocate to a legal market, which he says is still the plan.
“We are still going to be here,” Pena said. “This doesn’t change anything. We were hopeful for this outcome, but we didn’t want to gamble on the veto.”.
Although the ban is now off the table, Abbott is instead calling for regulations, which Pena says can get sticky.
“Putting caps on purchases– we don’t want that,” Pena said. “You should access medicine as you need it. We are 21 and up — we are good with that. We definitely want to see non-marketing with kids.”
Corpus Christi Police Captain Samantha Baldwin says hemp is considered to be made up of less than .3 % THC.
Delta 8 and Delta 10 are legal while Delta 9 is not and it’s important to know the difference if you plan to have these products in your possession.
“Nothing has really changed for us as far as that goes,” Baldwin said. “The difficult part is for the street officer recognizing what’s truly a THC product or a CBD product. What’s legal, what isn’t. It’s more of a challenge for a street officer than it is for us in the narcotics division.”
Pena says customers were cleaning off their shelves leading up to Sunday’s veto.
“We saw a surge because people were definitely buying quantity in the event that this happened,” Pena said. “Our support has been great from the community, and we want to continue to support you guys as well”, said Pena.
Abbott plans to discuss SB 3 further in a special July session.
