AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — Recent polls show that 84 percent of voting Texans believe the state should legalize marijuana for some uses, but an outright repeal of the prohibition against the drug is unlikely to happen anytime soon in the state.
Policymakers are focused on expanding medical marijuana use and reducing penalties for possession of small amounts of the drug, according to panelists discussing the politics of marijuana at the South by Southwest festival on Saturday.
State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, and Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy director Heather Fazio explained why the medical marijuana and possession laws in Texas need to change at a “Politics of Marijuana: What’s in Store for Texas” panel, one of several Cannabusiness discussions at the festival this year.
Moderated by Texas Tribune reporter Alex Samuels, the panel also featured Jackson County Sheriff A.J. Louderback, legislative chairman of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, which is fighting the marijuana reform bills that Fazio and Menéndez hope the Legislature will pass this year.
Menéndez doesn’t want to talk about legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and said he’s “laser-focused” on legalizing medical marijuana.
Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have legalized use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but in Texas doctors may prescribe only low-THC cannabis to patients with intractable epilepsy, under the Texas Compassionate Use Act of 2015.
“I think that the current Compassionate Use Act in Texas is worthless,” Menéndez said. “We say to cancer patients, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not worthy of it. HIV patients, sorry. Glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s, hepatitis C, you name it, you’re just not worthy.’
“I think it’s the doctors and the patients who should make the decisions about what they put in their body to make them better, not legislators,” Menéndez added.
The issue is personal for Menéndez, whose wife has multiple sclerosis. He said that if the state allows doctors to prescribe narcotics and opioids to help patients cope with pain, he doesn’t understand why the state won’t let doctors prescribe marijuana, which is safer.
“Yesterday, as we’re talking to the pain specialist in my wife’s hospital room, and he’s like, ‘OK, I need to get you off the opioid painkillers, the narcotics, so that you can go home,’ and I asked him, ‘Hey, if there were medical cannabis products available, would it help?’ And he said, ‘Yes,’” Menéndez said.
Menéndez’s Senate Bill 90 would expand the Texas Compassionate Use Act to give doctors the discretion to prescribe marijuana to any patient whom they believe could benefit from it.
It remains to be seen whether the bill will make it to a vote during this year’s legislative session, which ends May 29. Menéndez filed a similar bill during the 2017 legislative session, but it never received a committee hearing. Its companion bill in the House had nearly 80 co-sponsors, and did make it through committee in that chamber, but it was never scheduled for a vote. The Texas Legislature meets every other year.
Three other bills that would expand the Act in some way, including two by Republican lawmakers, have been filed this session. If none make it through this year, reformers will have to wait until the Legislature meets again in 2021 to try again to expand the Act.
Fazio said there is also bipartisan support for reducing penalties for low-level marijuana possession, noting that the Texas Republican delegates at their state convention last year adopted marijuana decriminalization as a party platform.