{"id":41514,"date":"2020-03-05T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/03\/05\/how-texas-accidentally-decriminalized-cannabis\/"},"modified":"2020-03-05T12:35:38","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T20:35:38","slug":"how-texas-accidentally-decriminalized-cannabis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/03\/05\/how-texas-accidentally-decriminalized-cannabis\/","title":{"rendered":"How Texas Accidentally Decriminalized Cannabis"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Texas might not have the most punitive cannabis laws in the United States, but no place that logs 80,000 misdemeanor arrests a year<\/a> can claim to be cool or chill \u2014 even if the penalty can range from nothing to jail time depending on local attitudes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

While Texas does have a very limited medical cannabis program, efforts to expand that beyond CBD oil or legalize recreational weed outright have failed, meaning possession of 4 ounces or less or sales of 7 grams or less are still misdemeanor crimes. But so what? Misdemeanor bad laws still on the books are no longer enforceable, because the state crime lab is now refusing to waste its time testing tiny scraps of suspected weed for THC.<\/p>\n

In late January, lawmakers in Austin, the city\u2019s most liberal city, announced small-scale marijuana arrests were off<\/a> after the Department of Public Safety state crime lab told prosecutors it would take up to a year to see if there was THC in any weed scraps that cops found lying around. <\/p>\n

Why does it take so long to
\nfind out if weed is weed? Outside of testing by private labs, a luxury most
\ngovernments appear unwilling to indulge, DPS appears to be the only agency able
\nto perform more sophisticated drug tests necessary for low-level busts now that
\nTexas legalized possession of hemp \u2014 a legal plant that happens to look and
\nsmell exactly like cannabis.<\/p>\n

The idea was that these petty
\nbusts could resume as soon as DPS perfected its new test and started working
\nthrough a backlog of cases, some of which date from the middle of last year.
\nBut on Feb. 18, agency Director Steven McCraw told the state\u2019s law enforcement
\nagencies that it would probably start testing on felony cases sometime in May
\nor June, but in felonies only. Misdemeanor cases, like simple possession, are
\nsomething the DPS lab simply does not have time for, McCraw wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cDPS laboratories analyze
\nmore than 50,000 felony drug cases per year and we do not accept misdemeanor
\ncases,\u201d he wrote, noting that while the state Legislature did give DPS some
\ncash to update its cannabis-testing protocol, lawmakers did not give DPS nearly
\nenough money to run everyone\u2019s pocket stash through the routine. <\/p>\n

With more than 80,000
\nmisdemeanor pot busts a year in Texas, \u201cDPS will not have the capacity to
\naccept those misdemeanor cases,\u201d McCraw wrote. What\u2019s more, he added, is that
\nDPS\u2019s testing protocol is good for plant material only \u2014 not for oils, edibles,
\nor anything else, at least not for right now.<\/p>\n

Exactly what this means, again, depends on where in Texas you find yourself. As The Texas Tribune reported<\/a>, most <\/em>big cities have their own labs to do the requisite testing, but as the experience in Austin demonstrated, not everybody \u2014 and even those that do aren\u2019t guaranteed to have the equipment and techniques DPS is finalizing to tell weed from hemp. <\/p>\n

Law enforcement officers told
\nthe Tribune that the shift is most likely to affect misdemeanor cases in rural
\ncounties that rely on the DPS lab for testing. In some of these, police and prosecutors
\nare still ringing people up on pot busts using circumstantial evidence, but
\nthere\u2019s always the risk that a judge or a jury will look askance at this and
\nsuch practice will lead to a string of acquittals. That in turn would most
\nlikely lead to cops asking themselves, \u201cWhy bother?\u201d and quitting the game
\nentirely.<\/p>\n

There is the chance that DPS will either find itself suddenly flush with cash thanks to a remorseful Legislature which found out that all but ending misdemeanor pot busts in Texas was not something that it set out to do. More likely, given public attitudes on the issue even in Texas, is that this accidental step towards decriminalization will be the first in a series of moves towards more realistic cannabis laws in the Lone Star State. If it had to happen thanks to a combination of federal hemp statutes and bureaucratic haggling over money, reform advocates will take it.<\/p>\n

TELL US,\u00a0<\/strong>is your state weed-friendly?<\/p>\n

The post How Texas Accidentally Decriminalized Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n
\nRead More: How Texas Accidentally Decriminalized Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas might not have the most punitive cannabis laws in the United States, but no place that logs 80,000 misdemeanor arrests a year can claim to be cool or chill \u2014 even if the penalty can range from nothing to jail time depending on local attitudes. While Texas does haveContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8070,50,296,90,726],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41515,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41514\/revisions\/41515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}