Texas Lawmakers Pass Medical Marijuana Program Expansion Bill, Sending It To The Governor’s Desk

Texas lawmakers have passed a bill to significantly expand the state’s medical marijuana program, sending it to the governor.

Just days after the legislation from Rep. Ken King (R) advanced through the Senate, with amendments that watered down the original House proposal, bicameral negotiators worked out a compromise over the weekend and then each chamber gave final approval on Sunday.

The measure now heads to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to potentially be signed into law.

The final version of the bill—which cleared the House on a 138-1 vote and the Senate by a vote of 31-0—would expand the state’s list of medical cannabis qualifying conditions to include chronic pain, traumatic brain injury (TBI), Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases, while also allowing end-of-life patients in palliative or hospice care to use marijuana.

The measure would additionally allow patients to access a wider range of cannabis product types—including patches, lotions, suppositories, approved inhalers, nebulizers and vaping devices.

And, it would mandate that the Department of Public Safety (DPS) increase the number of medical cannabis business licenses from the current three to 15. It would further allow dispensaries to open satellite locations.

House lawmakers on Friday had rejected the Senate’s changes to the bill, which largely scaled back the scope of the proposed expansion to the medical marijuana program.

The version passed by the House last month would have extended the currently limited list of medical cannabis qualifying conditions to include chronic pain, glaucoma, TBI, spinal neuropathy, Crohn’s disease or other inflammatory bowel disease and degenerative disc disease. It would also have allowed military veterans to become registered cannabis patients for any medical condition—and authorized the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) to further expand the list of qualifying conditions.

But those provisions were removed in the Senate State Affairs Committee before the bill reached the floor of that chamber.

Rep. Tom Oliverson (R) suggested there was an agreement around adding chronic pain with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), the presiding officer of the Senate. While Patrick disputed the characterization of their conversation, the lieutenant governor and lawmakers ultimately reached a deal to reinsert the condition into the bill with an amendment that passed on the Senate floor, among others.

Whereas the Senate version had said that chronic pain patients could only access medical cannabis if they had first tried opioids for 90 days, the final version crafted by the conference committee does not contain such a stipulation. And, under the agreement, TBI is being added back in as a new qualifying condition as well.

Lawmakers on Sunday passed resolutions adding Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases back into the bill as well, which Sen. Charles Perry (R) said on the floor were “inadvertently left out by the drafter late last night.”

Under the final bill now heading to the governor’s desk, patient registrations would be good for one year, with up to four refills of a 90-day supply. Medical cannabis packages, containers and devices would be allow to include up to 1 gram of total THC, with a 10 mg/dose limit.

Lawmakers also adopted resolutions on Sunday to clarify that a physician “may prescribe more than one package of low-THC cannabis to a patient in a 90-day period.”

While DSHS could not on its own add new qualifying conditions as would have been the case under the original House bill, the final version would allow physicians to petition the department to report to the legislature that cannabis appears to be beneficial for a condition, and then lawmakers could potentially act to expand the program.

The bill also includes protections mandating that patient information is confidential and may only be accessed by the department, registered physicians and dispensaries.

Regulators would be mandated to promulgate rules for the expanded program by October 1.

“For 10 years, most patients have been excluded from participating in the Compassionate Use Program,” Heather Fazio, executive director of the Texas Cannabis Policy Center, told Marijuana Moment. “We’re happy to see that the legislature is finally expanding the program in a meaningful way.”

(Disclosure: Fazio supports Marijuana Moment’s work via a monthly Patreon pledge.)

If ultimately signed into law, the bill would build upon Texas’s current, limited medical marijuana program, which allows patients with one of eight qualifying condition access certain non-smokable cannabis products containing no more than 0.5 percent THC by dry weight.

This comes in the background of a highly contentious debate over another piece of legislation that was sent to Abbott last month to ban consumable hemp products containing any amount of THC, even though federal law permits hemp products containing up to 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

Democrats have attacked the bill as an assault on personal liberty and gone after Patrick, the lieutenant governor, for his zeal around the ban.

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A recent poll found that four in five Texas voters want to see marijuana legalized in some form, and most also want to see regulations around cannabis relaxed.

Meanwhile in Texas, a House committee approved a Senate-passed bill last month that would prohibit cities from putting any citizen initiative on local ballots that would decriminalize marijuana or other controlled substances—as several localities have already done despite lawsuits from the state attorney general.

Under the proposal, state law would be amended to say that local entities “may not place an item on a ballot, including a municipal charter or charter amendment, that would provide that the local entity will not fully enforce” state drug laws.

While several courts have previously upheld local cannabis decriminalization laws, an appellate court comprised of three conservative justices appointed by the governor has recently pushed back against two of those rulings, siding with the state in its legal challenge to the marijuana policy in Austin and San Marcos.

Despite the ongoing litigation and advancement of the House and Senate bills, Texas activists have their targets set on yet another city, Kyle, where they hope put an initiative before voters to enact local marijuana reform at the ballot this coming November.

Separately lawmakers have also advanced measure to support research on the therapeutic potential of ibogaine with the aim of encouraging federal approval of the psychedelic.

That bill, SB 2308, would create a grant program through the state Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to provide funding for clinical trials exploring ibogaine as a potential treatment option for people suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD) and other serious mental health condition

Last month, meanwhile, the Texas House also passed a pair of bills designed to ensure speedy access to psychedelic-assisted therapy in the event of federal approval from Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Texas City’s Marijuana Decriminalization Law Saved Nearly Half A Million Dollars As Arrests Plummeted, Report Shows

Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.