AUSTIN, Texas – Texas lawmakers are looking to expand the law that allows the use of medical marijuana.
The expansion comes as lawmakers are also looking to clamp down on hemp products sold across the state.
Medical marijuana legislation
A medical marijuana dispensary, located in south Austin, is one of three operating under a state license. Since the program began in 2018, it’s estimated that about 110,000 people have been helped.
This highly-regulated business is now ready to grow, according to Texas Original CEO Nico Richardson.
“We’re very hopeful that our case has been heard now by the legislature. They understand that the people we are helping are some of the most necessary medical patients in Texas,” said Richardson.
Dig deeper:
Back in April, the House Public Health committee voted out HB 46.
On Tuesday, in the state Senate a companion bill, SB 1505, was ready for its floor debate. The legislation increases the number of licensed medical cannabis dispensaries from three to six. It also allows the license holders to set up satellite offices in different parts of Texas.
In the House hearing, Richardson explained the reasoning for that.
“We put it into our distribution cars. We’ll drive that across the state of Texas if a patient is not there for delivery. In El Paso or Rio Grande Valley or East Texas. We have to drive it back that day as soon as possible and put it back into storage in that one facility,” said Richardson as he testified in April.
The proposed legislation expands what’s known as the Texas Compassionate Use law.
“The second piece where it’s really going to help actually is just the cost of the medicine, which is we’re already pretty competitively priced with what people can go find in this unregulated hemp market, as long as they’re buying Delta nine that’s plant-derived. If they’re buying all the other synthetic garbage like Delta eight and everything else, nobody can compete with that,” said Richardson.
Hemp industry legislation
Dig deeper:
Lawmakers are also looking to clamp down on the unregulated hemp industry. SB 3 bans most products containing THC, like gummies and beverages.
There is a compromise bill to regulate the products and create a licensing process, but Richardson warns that could involve nearly 10,000 businesses.
“I mean just the agency you’d have to build up to go in and to make sure all those people are selling properly regulated products, you can’t do it. So, the first thing they have to do if they want to regulate an industry is shrink the retail count down to something that actually matches our population when you look at the rest of the country, which basically means wiping out 90% of the retail in the state of Texas to begin with. And nobody wants to do that on the hemp side,” said Richardson.
Two years ago, time ran out on similar legislation to expand the compassionate use law.
There’s less than a month left in this session.
The Source: Information from the Texas legislative session
Texas lawmakers are looking to expand the law that allows the use of medical marijuana. The expansion comes as lawmakers are also looking to clamp down on hemp products sold across the state. Read More
