Waited till the last minute because he’s such a drama queen.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday vetoed a contentious state ban on THC products and shortly after called a special legislative session asking lawmakers to instead strictly regulate the substance.
The late-night action just minutes before the veto deadline keeps the Texas hemp industry alive for now, while spiking a top priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
Senate Bill 3 would have banned consumable hemp products that contained any THC, including delta-8 and delta-9.
Abbott, who had remained quiet about the issue throughout the legislative session, rejected the measure amid immense political pressure from both sides of the aisle, including from conservatives activists typically supportive of Patrick’s priorities.
Soon after midnight, Abbott called lawmakers back to the Capitol for a special session beginning July 21 with consumable hemp regulation at the top of the agenda.
“Texas must enact a regulatory framework that protects public safety, aligns with federal law, has a fully funded enforcement structure and can take effect without delay,” Abbott said.
In a statement explaining his veto, Abbott argued that SB 3 would not have survived “valid constitutional challenges,” and that the bill’s total ban “puts federal and state law on a collision course,” noting that the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized hemp products.
“Allowing Senate Bill 3 to become law — knowing that it faces a lengthy battle that will render it dead on arrival in court — would hinder rather than help us solve the public safety issues this bill seeks to contain,” Abbott said. “The current market is dangerously under-regulated, and children are paying the price. If Senate Bill 3 is swiftly enjoined by a court, our children will be no safer than if no law was passed, and the problems will only grow.”
Abbott urged lawmakers to consider an approach similar to the way alcohol is regulated, recommending potential rules including barring the sale and marketing of THC products to minors, requiring testing throughout the production and manufacturing process, allowing local governments to prohibit stores selling THC products and providing law enforcement with additional funding to enforce the restrictions.
Abbott’s veto — and his push for a regulatory approach — puts him directly at odds with Patrick, the powerful head of the Senate, who had called the THC ban among his “top five” bills during his 17 years in the Legislature and threatened in February to force a special session if he did not get his way.
Patrick excoriated the veto on social media Sunday, saying Abbott’s “late-night veto” would leave law enforcement and families whose loved ones have been harmed by high-potency products “feeling abandoned.”
“Throughout the legislative session, @GregAbbott_TX remained totally silent on Senate Bill 3, the bill that would have banned dangerous THC products in Texas,” Patrick said. “I feel especially bad for those who testified and poured their hearts out on their tragic losses.”
See here for the previous update, and here for other vetoes and the initial special session call. One of those vetoes is especially egregious:
Among the bills Abbott vetoed was House Bill 413, which would have ensured that no defendant could be held in custody before trial for longer than the punishment they would receive if convicted. That bill, which was co-authored by a bipartisan group of five lawmakers from around the state, passed the House 126-10 and the Senate 30-1.
When promoting the bill on KCEN news before its passage in May, co-author Rep. Pat Curry, R-Waco, said, “if there’s a penalty that requires two years in prison and you’ve spent two years waiting to go to trial, you need to be released.”
I’ve run out of adjectives to describe what a shitheel Abbott is. Feel free to supply some of your own in the comments. He can add to the call anytime and call more sessions as he sees fit, so what we have now is unlikely to be all of the business the Lege will be told to attend to. Whether or not that includes re-redistricting is a question we don’t yet know the answer to.
Right now, the THC situation is front and center. Dan Patrick is mad, and as I suggested before it’s not clear to me that there’s enough Republican support in the Senate to pass a House-like bill. Patrick controls the agenda in the Senate, and he could simply decide that there’s no bill acceptable to both him and Abbott that can or will make it through. The main uncertainty there is that the status quo is now what it was before, with the THC market being lightly regulated. Would Dan Patrick prefer to get over himself and push for a maximally restrictive regulatory structure, knowing that he would get opportunities for further tightening in subsequent sessions (assuming this all doesn’t lead to him being unelected), or does he embrace the chaos and use the next two year railing about how the legal market for THC products is bad and harmful and maybe the next time people will listen to him as they should have done all along? Hell if I know. Keep an eye on what he says leading up to July 21.
One more point to consider, this isn’t just about Abbott versus Patrick. Patrick as noted got his bill through the Senate, with his minions in full support. He got the House to switch to his bill, which caused its own rift after his temporarily broken promise on expanding the medical marijuana allowances. My point is that a lot of Republican legislators voted for the ban, some with full hearts while quite a few others did so against their inclinations. Whatever happens in the special session(s), they may well get challenged on that in the 2026 elections, both primary and general. It’s one thing to step out onto a limb and against your supporters’ preferences when you have the backing of your party leadership. It’s another to be hung out to dry, which is what Abbott’s veto did to them. So now even though many Republicans will get a chance to do what they wanted to do initially, they’ve got to be smarting about this. Abbott has more than one fence to mend, is what I’m saying. The Chron and The Barbed Wire have more.
UPDATE: Off to a great start.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Monday that he would not agree to Gov. Greg Abbott’s calls to regulate THC products — which he equated to legalizing marijuana in Texas — setting up an apparent impasse between the state’s two most powerful Republicans as lawmakers are set to return to Austin this summer.
Patrick, the biggest champion of outlawing hemp-derived THC products, said he believes Abbott put lawmakers in a box by vetoing the ban and urging them to treat the booming industry similarly to the way Texas handles alcohol.
“What Governor Abbott proposes is for us to legalize marijuana in Texas — by regulating it,” Patrick said during an at-times heated press conference at the Capitol on Monday.
“I’m not going to legalize marijuana in Texas,” Patrick said. “If people want to vote me out of office for that, so be it. Not going to do it.”
[…]
Patrick said he was caught off guard by Abbott’s move late Sunday night to veto the THC ban that was one of the lieutenant governor’s top priorities, claiming the governor had previously assured him he would sign the bill.
“We usually find common ground. But this veto, this late — after he told me he was going to sign it: ‘Your bill’s fine,’” Patrick said. “I didn’t start this. I did my work. We did our legal work. We talked to lawyers, we made sure this was constitutionally sound.”
A spokesman for the governor said Abbott “has always shared the Lieutenant Governor’s desire to ensure that THC products are not sold to our children and that the dangerous synthetic drugs that we have seen recently are banned.”
[…]
The lieutenant governor said Monday that he had worked with Abbott this session on the governor’s priority legislation establishing a cybersecurity hub in San Antonio, which Patrick said he did not initially support. But he said he asked Abbott for an argument for the bill and eventually came around.
“I took it home, I read it for the weekend, and I said, ‘I’m with you, you made your point’,” Patrick said.
Patrick said Abbott did not extend the same courtesy on his THC ban.
“Where was he on this bill?” Patrick said. “He could have talked to us at any time. The speaker, myself, members — he didn’t ever discuss this. And then to parachute in at the last moment over the will of the Senate and the House.”
“We will work through it, hopefully,” Patrick said. “But it’s not the state I want. I don’t want my kids, my grandkids, growing up in a state where everybody’s high.”
I’m fully on board with the voting him out of office part. Make it a double for Abbott, too. As for Abbott’s parachute-in-at-the-last-minute stuff, I mean, that’s been his MO for his entire time as Governor. This time it hit home for Patrick. No sympathy from me, of course. Let them fight. The Trib has more.
re: ““Where was he on this bill?” Patrick said. “He could have talked to us at any time. The speaker, myself, members — he didn’t ever discuss this. And then to parachute in at the last moment over the will of the Senate and the House.””
Dan-O, passing the bill may have been the will of the TX House and TX Senate, but it wasn’t the will of your TX constituents. That’s why they lobbied Abbott so hard and convinced him signing it wasn’t in TX’s best interest.
Lt. Dan needs to put the Reefer Madness DVD down. I seriously doubt that CO is collapsing into some dystopian hellscape because everyone is getting high all the time.
By all means, put some reasonable regs on the hemp industry. But don’t preach about how bad it is when a more dangerous intoxicant (alcohol) is legal.
@Fly…
Preach. Lindsey Lohan, Mischa Barton, Tiger Woods, Mel Gibson, Jay Cutler, Lamar Odom, Hope Solo, Mary Lou Retton, Yes, but I’m not too worried about Cheech and Chong getting off their couch and engaging in criminal behavior.
RE: ETHANOL IN ITS VARIOUS INGESTIBLE FORMS
Prohibition (by constitutional amendment in the USA) has been tried and failed.
So what you have instead is a patchwork of regulation (not very logical) and a selective categorical prohibition based on age that is uniform. Although the drinking age (like the age of majority, marriage capacity, and consent) is in theory a matter for the states, the Feds have in effect forced the higher drinking age (age of majority +3) upon all component states through federal highway funds contingency. So, there is in effect again a national Prohibition, though limited to a narrow age bracket.
In Germany, for a contrast, the drinking age is 16 for Bier and Wein and 18 for hard liquor (spirits). Adolescents are free to get drunk and sick (and hopefully learn their lesson and become responsible consumers), but don’t usally get serious life-threatening alcohol poisoning due to large intake of hard liquor in short period of time. In any event, that learning-curve concept appears to form the rationale for the staggering of age-based legal access to alcoholic beverages of different potency.
Younger teens may also consume alcohol under parental supervision. And all forms of alcohol are sold at supermarkets: Think Aldi (also in USA but booze-free), Lidl, Spar.
See generally https://smartergerman.com/blog/rules-facts-drinking-beer-germany/
The evidence of what is a better regulatory regime in terms of public health is mixed, and cultural values also play a role, as do patterns of transportation (drunk driving less of problem with walkable cities/pubs round the corner and public transport). And, of course, you have to allow for different democracies to express their values in their respective policy regimes. Health and accident prevention is just one consideration.
THE PLEASURE SOCIETY
I recently re-read BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley, a different dystopian vision compared to Orwell’s 1984, which is better known, where social peace is maintained by a universally available drug called SOMA. Promiscuous sex is also promoted and delinked entirely from procreation. For propagation of the species (death not having been eliminated), various castes of humans/humanoids are produced and conditioned (like Pavlovian dogs) in massive hatcheries.
Lasting dyadic romantic attachments are scorned and marriage and family have been abolished. Mother and father have largely been deleted as antiquated concepts though such familial relationships still persist in a reservation of “savages” in New Mexico.
Do you want such a world?
Free weed, psychodelics, and other drugs may bring us closer, and depress public participation and interest in politics and community well-being even further.
Shall we overcome? All those obstacles and challenges we face in daily life.
Or all be stoned and lethargic?
There’s a whole lot of territory between Lt. Dan’s puritanical vision and Huxley’s hedonistic one. Europe looks to have staked out the most sensible section.