Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is pushing lawmakers to ban all forms of consumable hemp products in Texas, claiming misuse of a 2019 law by certain retailers.
A law passed in 2019 was intended to boost Texas agriculture by permitting the commercialization of hemp, but Patrick said the law has been abused by retailers using loopholes to market products with unsafe levels of THC.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller shared that Patrick is right to go after these unregulated and often illegal businesses.
"Like the lieutenant governor, I am not for recreational marijuana, and that's basically what we have unintentionally," Miller said. "We didn't do it on purpose."
Miller also noted the law didn’t foresee Delta 8 and 9, those products weren’t around at the time, but now they are all over the place.
"So it's been known fact that these gummies show up in the pockets of 2nd and 3rd graders," Miller said. "That's a problem. We've got to address it, you know, at a minimum, we've got to put some age restrictions on this."
However, Miller is for medical marijuana and hopes lawmakers protect those rights.
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