No Sign of Compromise Talks on THC
as Impasse Makes Status Quo Best Bet
Capitol Inside
June 27, 2025
Governor Greg Abbott wants Texas lawmakers to lay the foundation for a heavily-regulated cannabis industry this summer at a special session that begins on July 21 at the Texas Capitol in Austin. But there have been no apparent signs up to now of efforts under way to forge a compromise that would be ready for hearings and votes when lawmakers return with THC at the top of the menu in the aftermath of Abbott's 11th-hour veto that killed a THC ban in Senate Bill 3 on Sunday night.
With Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Abbott at loggerheads on the fate of a hemp industry that Republican lawmakers voted to shutter, the prospects for multiple special sessions is a real possibility based on the Texas Legislature's history since the advent of the covid pandemic five years ago.
The overriding question at this point is which of the state's two most powerful leaders will blink first on THC. There appear to be three different paths legislators could take in this particular fight. The Republicans who voted the way Patrick demanded in regular session can choose to stick by their guns and back the THC prohibition the lieutenant governor championed as a top three priority this year. Or they go with the governor and vote to regulate. Or they can do nothing.
An irreconcilable impasse would be a tacit endorsement of the status quo in a state where thousands of hemp dispensaries would continue to operate without having the state in their business with a myriad of new rules, licensing requirements and state excise taxes to collect and pay.
Patrick suggested at a press conference this week that there's no middle ground between the polar views that he and the governor have taken on THC up to now. But the lieutenant governor gave the impression that the status quo is unacceptable at the same time he promised to block a Senate vote on a regulatory proposal that Abbott has requested. That leaves prohibition as the only rationale solution in Patrick's mind.
Patrick is putting the Senate Republicans in a terrible position if they're forced to make a choice between him and a governor who's considered them partners in the conservative cause for years. But that will be the case if the lieutenant governor refuses to moderate the extreme position he's advocated.
Patrick could be dreaming or delusional, however, if he thinks the House Republicans are going to be in his corner again on THC in the upcoming special session. The lieutenant governor won the support of Republicans in the House by threatening to kill their pet bills during the regular session's final two weeks if they failed to bow to him on the banning of THC.
The Senate president told the GOP's representatives that he'd force a special summer session if they did not vote the way he wanted on SB 3. Most thought at that point they would have the luxury of taking the summer off for the first time since 2019. Texas lawmakers met in three special sessions in 2021 before Abbott summoned them back for four in 2023. The Legislature had one special session during Patrick's first six years on the job as the state Senate president.
But the House Republicans couldn't see that Patrick was simply bluffing them - and they failed to anticipate the veto that left them hung out to dry on votes they could find almost impossible to defend as a consequence of the veto they completely failed to anticipate. The special session is giving Republicans in the lower chamber the opportunity for some absolution for votes that were cast under the perception of duress in stampede fashion.
Abbott is well past the point of no return on THC. So the most likely scenario - barring a Patrick softening or other unforeseen developments - is that the House will resurrect a regulatory plan the GOP members gutted at the last minute when they approved SB 3 with the ban late last month.
State Rep. Ken King - a Canadian Republican who chairs the powerful State Affairs Committee - had devised the regulation proposal that included licensing requirements and fees and the imposition of excise taxes to foot the bill for oversight and enforcement. King was one of two House Republicans who voted against the ban that GOP State Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress added to SB 3 in an amendment on the floor. But King voted for the finished product with the blanket statewide prohibition in SB 3 when it cleared the chamber with State Rep. Brian Harrison of Midlothian as the lone opposing vote cast by a Republican.
The special session gives everyone a chance for a fresh start on a subject for which they had little or no expertise, experience or apparent understanding of the how the cannabis industry works or why it's become so popular with Republican voters as a major source of the demand that fuels it.
Abbott would be wise to share his polling data with GOP lawmakers before the special session opens for business. Beyond the significance of the SB 3 decision in terms of the practical power structure in the nation's largest red state, Abbott's internal poll numbers had to be off the charts before he'd make a move that bold and pull the rug from under Republicans who looked like deer in the headlights in the SB 3 veto's immediate wake.
The Republicans and Democrats alike could do themselves a favor by securing a copy of the book Desperados: Latin Druglords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win - a classic that veteran journalist Elaine Shannon composed and published in 1988 as the gold-standard analysis of the U.S. war on drugs and why it had been a perpetual failure. Lawmakers could learn a lot about economics and life outside comfort zones from this book.
But it's going to boil down to the three simple options on the future of THC in Texas. Regulate. Ban. Or go with the status quo. The latter may be the smartest bet given the nature of the egos that are driving this.
more to come ...
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