Gov. Greg Abbott vetoes THC ban | Hacker News Reader

Gov. Greg Abbott vetoes THC ban

texastribune.org

49 pointsDocFeind49 comments

Given the amount of profits and taxes raised through cannabis legalization, and the volume of voters who want it, only the most narrowly focused, dogmatic politician seems to oppose legalization.

Full legalization is coming, one way or another, and states opposing it are only hurting themselves.

I'm not familiar with the texas government, but doesn't the fact that it ended up on the governor's desk mean that the "narrowly focused, dogmatic" politicians run the two chambers?

> I'm not familiar with the texas government

> the "narrowly focused, dogmatic" politicians run the two chambers?

Yes. This is VERY Texas. The state government is 100% conservative republican.

"Texas is a majority Republican state with Republicans controlling every statewide office.[1] Texas Republicans have majorities in the State House and Senate, an entirely Republican Texas Supreme Court, control of both Senate seats in the US Congress."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Texas#:~:text=Texa...

So I guess I struggle with the idea that it's a thin slice of dogmatic legislators, when it seems that the majority of the state's legislators are still against THC.

Both can be true. Dogmatic legislators get voted into office along party lines, but they are not representative of the actual beliefs of most Texans (they appeal to what a lot of Texans think they should believe, but don't actually when it comes to lived reality). On this issue, the governor is aware that a lot of Texans would be in an uproar if they can no longer buy THC legally. This includes veterans and business owners who are considered special classes by the governor. I deeply dislike Abbott, but on this occasion, I think he did the right thing.

How do you do that highlight on Wiki? Is it just via URL or is there a handy way to share a link like that?

In Chrome, the right click context menu has a "Copy link to highlight" option. It'll add the appropriate stuff to the URL to highlight what you've selected and put it in your clipboard.

Thank you!

I'm familiar with Texas gov. given the amount of power the Lt Gov has in Texas, since he has the ability to unilaterally set the legislative agenda, it's really more like: Lt Gov Dan Patrick is obviously dogmatic given just the quotes in the article

but yes, to answer your question

Well, we are talking about the Texas state legislature. It is going to be prone to narrowly focused dogmatic politicians.

There's some inertia. For a long time, being against cannabis legalization went hand in hand with being "tough on crime". A politician coming out in support of it ran a high chance of being called "soft on crime" by their opponents. There can also be a racial edge due to people who primarily see crime and cannabis as minority-driven problems.

> I'm not familiar with the texas government, but doesn't the fact that it ended up on the governor's desk mean that the "narrowly focused, dogmatic" politicians run the two chambers?

The legislature has a 'mandate' from the people because it was elected. The governor has a 'mandate' from the people because he was elected.

Does one have more of a mandate than the other, or are they equal? What happens when they have different policies?

This is one of the weakness of presidential systems:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_system#Efficienci...

I'm pretty sure often these things go forward because they are expected to fail. Your base and the single-issue voters notice and reward you for 'trying', but the general public does not really remember or care about that time 3 years ago you voted for a bill that never passed. Gives some flavors of brexit, which was not an expected or desired outcome by the PM who ultimately called the referendum.

Sibling comments are trying to explain the "dogmatic" politicians but really they just took money from alcohol companies.

> Full legalization is coming, one way or another

I used to think this, and it may be true in the very long run. However, the country is clearly in the midst of a long pivot backwards. The current backsliding has been going on for the better part of a decade, and there are no indications that it is near its end.

I guess we'll see.

You are correct about our backslide, but rich white males like pot so I think it could move forward while other rights and laws are being reversed.

It's amazing how thorough a cross section of society I see when I visit weed stores. Every age, every race. "I just got out of bed" clothes and business suits. Work boots and high heels.

In the last couple years, I've had several work conversations where someone off hand mentioned the edibles they took for a concert the previous weekend, or the weed vape they took camping, or some other personal life story involving weed. Not in a hushed private conversation, it's in the small talk before a meeting kicks off. It's become very normalized. Even 5 years ago I would be shocked at someone casually discussing their weed usage with coworkers.

And the tax money. Oh boy the tax money.

I agree. From day one of legalization, it wasn't a bunch of hippies at the dispensaries. It was people from all walks of life.

I like how in The Netherlands coffee shops you can actually smoke weed. Is that available in US?

The shops I’ve visited in US were very high end, you get carded, etc. While in The Netherlands patrons seem to be pretty low class, occasionally borderline mental.

That depends on the state. The stores in the state where I do my buying does not allow smoking or vaping of any kind on the property. I seem to recall in at least one other state I visited, there were signs for a smoking lounge.

It's popular among downwardly mobile males (a major swing demographic now) AND farmers now as well (plenty of top Ag schools now offer degrees or certificates in Cannabis cultivation).

And every municipality loves the tax implications - a side effect of the lackadaisical recovery of local budgets from Covid.

Many professionals also use cannabis but choose to not advertise it since misinformation is still so rampant, originating from the "Reefer Madness" propaganda days. The tradeoff of potential career damage just isn't worth it.

Carl Sagan understood this, among many others:

https://bigthink.com/health/carl-sagan-on-smoking-marijuana/

> rich white males

are not a homogeneous group. Part of the backsliding is that the subset that is socially liberal is losing power, being replaced by those who seek to promote yet more restrictions on individual liberties. There's rich guys on both sides of this.

Of course not. This goes for literally everything. Hardly a comment that needs to be made.

Texas will be the last state in the union to legalize. Last election, Dallas voters decided to decriminalize, and the governor sued to prevent that from happening.

There's a chasm between legalize and banning. Banning would prevent the compassionate use that has already been allowed. This banning is a knee-jerk reaction to those that have found the loop hole carved out in the compassionate use limits still allow for enough THC that recreational use can still be achieved. Rather than restricting the loop hole to still require prescription, they instead want to ban out right

I would be betting on Utah to be the last state to legalize (it was the first to ban).

I don't have much familiarity with local Utah politics, so you could be right. However, I am familiar with the Texas local politics in how they are king of the gerrymander and plenty of other games where people like Karl Rove led the way.

It looks like the number of dispensaries / smoke shops that have opened up in Texas have finally reached the critical mass to unlock enough sweet, sweet tax / lobby revenue.

It's only a matter of time before more states realize how much money they're leaving on the table without legalization.

And reached the critical mass to threaten alcohol company profits...

And alcoholism treatment industry profits

This may be the only sensible thing Abbott has done in a while. Texas is trending towards a nanny state for quite a bit for things Republicans politicians don't like.

It's miracle that Dan Patrick is not in jail and wasn't impeached from his job last year. Tough on crime Republicans in Texas Senate acquitted him of 16 impeachment charges around bribery and corruption.

Wrong guy, you're thinking of the AG, Ken Paxton. It is a travesty that he still holds his position and is likely to unseat Cornyn (who is also terrible, but less so) in the coming senate race.

Ah you are right! I was thinking of ken Paxton.

Texas is not tough on crime. Like most corrupt governments, they are tough on people they don't like.

Yup. Austin's criminalization of homelessness without providing housing is just one example. While it technically made a partial dent (but still there are tents under I-35), it did so with brutality and without addressing any of the systemic factors.

More widely, the leopards are eating faces.

> Supporters of SB 3 argued that a full prohibition was necessary to protect young people from consuming products with high concentrations of THC.

This is a bit like saying: in order to prevent minors from getting their hands on Everlear or 151, we must ban all alcohol in all forms.

> Though that 2019 law does not allow products to contain more than trace amounts of delta-9 THC, it did not establish that same threshold for other hemp derivatives. Critics say the hemp industry exploited that loophole to usher in more than 8,000 retailers selling THC-laced edibles, drinks, vapes and flower buds across Texas.

And here lies the real problem I see, when state governments start banning recreational cannabis and instead have "hemp loopholes", you end up with a much sketchier product for consumers. In Colorado I can go to the dispensary and buy "pure pot" that is just flower that was grown, dried and packaged with no other modification. With these hemp derivatives like Delta 8/9/etc, they distill down the various parts into a chemical form and then spray that shit on hemp flower or add it to other products.

Now the question I ask is: how was it distilled? what chemicals were used in the process? are those chemicals safe? and a million other related questions. With regular pot there's none of that.

And the last thing I'll say on this is it seems that pot has unfortunately gotten tangled up in the culture war here in the US. Lots of folks I see now that oppose cannabis legalization don't really have a specific reason to oppose it, they just do because "pot" is now a proxy for "woke" and "liberal" and they have to own the libs.

Pot has always been tangled in the culture war. The war on drugs prohibition that ramped up in the 60s/70s was specifically done to criminalize the anti-war left.

> Now the question I ask is: how was it distilled? what chemicals were used in the process? are those chemicals safe? and a million other related questions. With regular pot there's none of that.

You absolutely should be asking those questions about “regular pot” as well. AIUI concentrates are among the bestselling and most profitable products in legal states, and they use uncertain chemicals of questionable provenance even if the delta-9 THC is 100% natty. But even if you’re just buying flower you could reasonably be concerned about pesticides or mold [1].

I think there are some quite good reasons to oppose cannabis legalization (for example, it’s made the super-high-potency concentrates which are associated with bad outcomes much more widely available) and it’s possible your own culture war or other biases are getting in your way here. But there are also lots of good arguments in favor of course.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/marijuana-mold-contami...

> With regular pot there's none of that

What about fertilizers? Chemicals sprayed on the flower? Mold or other contaminants? Mystery THC derivatives are bad, but so is cheaply grown weed.

Why aren't we worried about contaminants in liquor and beer? How can that be applied to THC products?

Liquor is highly regulated which may lead you to believe that Texas should legalize and regulate THC products.

They should! And invest profits of liquor and THC in education for kids and anti-addiction treatments.

“flower that was grown, dried and packaged with no other modification”

Who determines what is acceptable for that and who does the testing and how? Like, can they spray with neem oil to counter pests and it’s still organic “pure pot” but you would be smoking traces of neem oil? I find the concept of “pure pot” somewhat dubious. Isn’t hash more pure?

Texas where regular cannabis is still criminalized and there's no actual dispensaries, the tobacco, smoke shops and gas stations are flooded with the delta-8, 10, 12, etc products. Advertising on billboards for cannabis analogs with the leaf but no full cannabis (edit: delta-9 for those unaware.)

It's ridiculous. There's no enforcement on all the analogs that work maybe 50% as well as the actual thing. The state has to be happy and looking the other way on all the tax revenue now being brought in by these corner smoke shops.

You can buy real flower (not delta dusted) at most smoke shops here.

In case anyone were wondering: delta 8/9 THC were/are de facto decriminalized in TX because of the exception that substances originating from hemp are okay while ordinary marijuana plants are still illegal. It's inconsistent and silly. In practice, ordinary marijuana has entered gray market status as it is sometimes for sale in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio in some small shops.

The war on drugs continues because there's police and prison money and status gained by maintaining the status quo.

This stuff was legalized with a bill written by Republicans in congress, passed in a Republican majority controlled house and senate, and signed into law by a Republican president. To call the legislature in Texas at this point extremist is an understatement. Mind boggling how out of touch they have become even with their own base.

I was in Canada before, during and after recreational legalization. Nothing bad happened, in fact, a lot of organized crime lost a revenue stream. Now I live in Wisconsin and I’m amazed that the state gives away free tax money to three of its neighbors.

Hmm, why is this flagged?

Anything that veers into politics on Hacker News tends to get flagged quickly. Unfortunately that often tends to happen on the more aggressive side, since a subject like this is intellectually interesting beyond just the simple American political split.

As one oft to complain about HN's recent flag-happy state, this one seems deserved. It's just banal news, but has no relevance to tech or the shape of the world/culture.

I am happy to hear it, though!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com