Texas House Backs New THC Prohibition
in Move that Would Wreck Thriving Industry
Capitol Inside
May 21, 2025
The Texas House voted late Wednesday night to ban THC products made from hemp with an amendment that gutted an extensive regulatory and enforcement proposal that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick worked vigorously behind the scenes to kill.
The House brought an all-out prohibition that Patrick has championed back to life with a vote of 86-53 for the amendment that GOP State Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress sponsored in an attempt to reboot the original Senate bill. The radically different proposal in Senate Bill 3 received a tentative nod on an anti-climatic 95-44 vote
The sponsor of SB 3 - State Rep. Ken King of Canadian - was one of only two Republicans who cast votes against the Oliverson amendment along with former Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont. King crafted the plan that was instantly dismantled by the revision to the House version of the bill.
But a half-dozen Democrats - State Reps. Suleman Lalani of Sugar Land, Christian Manuel of Port Arthur, Armando Martinez of Weslaco, Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio, Eddie Morales of Eagle Pass and Claudia Ordaz of El Paso - broke ranks with votes for the Oliverson provision.
The THC measure will return to the Senate where Patrick can have the Republicans vote to go to conference or accept the House alterations that reflect the original Senate proposal.
Democrats heard throughout the day that the fates of the THC prohibition and a public school funding bill were tied together as bargaining chips during negotiations on the cannabis proposal. While contacting some House members directly to plug the ban, Patrick portrayed the hemp business like a plague on Texas society.
"We cannot in good conscience leave Austin without banning THC, which is harming our children, and destroying Texans’ lives and families," the lieutenant governor warned in a post this afternoon on X.
Democrats said the dangers of THC had been wildly exaggerated and that a prohibition would hit small businesses hardest in a state where more than 53,000 people are employed at retail establishments that have mushroomed across Texas since the Legislature opened the gates for it with a hemp bill in 2019.
"We're still rehashing parts of Reefer Madness from the sixties," Houston State Rep. Gene Wu, the Democratic Caucus chairman, told the House in a speech in opposition to the resurrected ban. "Here we are again trying to go backwards in time."
Democratic State Rep. Ron Reynolds of Missouri City said that a THC ban would cost Texans $1.6 billion in lost wages while depriving state government of tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues in the first year alone. State Rep. Josey Garcia - a San Antonio Democrat who's the first ever active-duty woman veteran in the House - warned that a ban would have a devastating effect on other veterans who've benefited significantly from the access they've had for five or six years to consumable THC that would no longer be available to them without prescriptions from doctors.
more to come ...
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