The sale of marijuana is illegal in Texas except for some limited medicinal use, right? Not so fast.
A recent article in Texas Monthly claims that the state has basically legalized marijuana.
On this edition of Weekend Insight, TPR’s Jerry Clayton speaks with the author, Russell Gold, senior editor at Texas Monthly.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Clayton: You went to eight of these so-called hemp dispensaries around Texas that say they're not selling marijuana. What did you find?
Gold: We went out across the state — Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio — and we bought what was sold to us as hemp. Hemp is a low THC product under state and federal law. But when we took what we bought and sent it off to testing facilities, it came back that this was very much marijuana, much above the limit of what separates hemp from marijuana. This was, by all intents and purposes — in fact, it was marijuana, which is a controlled substance under state and federal law right now.
Clayton: What is the difference between a hemp dispensary in Texas and driving, say, across over into New Mexico to go to a legal dispensary? Is it two different products?
Gold: Well, that's a great question. I'm gonna have to say not much. Under law, hemp dispensaries in Texas, they can only sell something that has less than 0.3% by dry weight, Delta nine THC, which is a long way of saying that's the psychoactive ingredient that sort of makes marijuana marijuana. If you go into New Mexico, you can buy something which has a much higher percentage, legally. But what we found is that what's being sold in Texas has a high concentration of these psychoactive compounds.
Clayton: In your article, you quote two state senators, one Democrat Jose Menendez, who says, "in a way inadvertently we passed a law that sort of legalized the use of cannabis in the state of Texas." And then Republican Sen. Charles Perry, who says, “To be clear, Texas did not legalize pot knowingly or unknowingly.” What's the disconnect here?
Gold: That's a great question. It's a little bit of a head scratcher. I think my reporting comes down on the side of Sen. Menendez out of San Antonio. As you pointed out, there are 7,000 legally licensed hemp dispensaries in Texas right now, which is just an enormous number, and what's being sold ... we went out. We bought eight products, and we were eight for eight in terms of buying something that was legally marijuana.
So effectively, you can buy, legally, marijuana right now in Texas, I think the only caveat I would put on it, the only aspect is that if you buy some of this legally, and then you get pulled over by the cops, and the cops want to bust you, they can. ...
So it's this strange gray area we find ourselves in right now. We're, without really breaking a sweat, you can walk into a state licensed store and buy something which is ... absolutely marijuana, and then if you're pulled over by the cops, you're gonna get busted for that. So it's a strange situation we find ourselves in right now.
The federal law, which the state adopted, says that if you have a product which is hemp and has a low level of THC, then you can sell it as hemp. What the loophole that's emerged and what most of these hemp dispensaries are doing is that they're selling a product which has something called THCA, which chemically speaking is really close to THC. And, in fact, when you light it on fire becomes THC.
And the botanists and the chemists in this industry are creating products that appear legal under state and federal law. But when you look at them and when you analyze them, clearly ... they smell like marijuana. They smoke like marijuana. They are effectively marijuana.
