As increasingly common as certain political upsets and the changing of power and/or legislation have become in the Trump era, some political sentiments and opinions seem to be naturally resistant to change.
The past five months in Austin have shown the true might of cannabis advocacy in Texas. Veterans, children, lawyers, former and current elected officials, experts in many fields and thousands of other notable individuals attended all types of Legislature committee hearings, testified in favor of the numerous cannabis-related bills and distributed information to their respective legislators. The personal testimonies were deeply impactful, personal, emotional and heart-wrenching to anyone with a working conscience, meaning at least some of Texas’ lawmakers.
Following the passing of House Bills 63, 1365 and 3703 in the House of Representatives with either majorities or supermajorities, there was a great deal of excitement and hype surrounding these pieces of legislation. Yet as prohibitionist fate would have it, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick declared his unwarranted vengeance against cannabis reform and announced that all cannabis-related bills are dead in the Senate, albeit for House Bill 3703. Patrick decided to commit the legislative form of “trolling” even further by allowing a Senate hearing to be held on the far more encompassing HB 1365 yet not allowing the scheduling of the hearing until far beyond the deadline to have a hearing.
As a result of the septuagenarian Lt. Governor’s blatant Anslinger-like philosophy, only HB 3703 even made it to a Senate Health and Human Services hearing, where the bill passed out of the committee unanimously. HB 3703, which isn’t a “medical marijuana” program in the slightest, would expand upon the state’s impossibly restrictive Texas Compassionate Use Program and include autism and terminal cancer among few additions to the list of qualifying conditions.
Today on the Senate floor, HB 3703 was hotly debated for close to an hour before being passed unanimously. To the pleasure of the many parents of children who have autism, the TCUP-approved CBD oils will serve as another possible medical remedy. For those suffering from the destructive horrors of terminal cancer, these oils may help alleviate the symptoms of their ailments. And as opposed to the TCUP of 2015, all types of epilepsy will be included in the 2019 expansion.
Yet even with all the positive expansion, the Senate meeting over HB 3703 proved that the anti-cannabis, Reefer Madness-esque philosophy shared partially with the Lt. Governor is still running rampant.
The Senate’s sponsor, Dr. Donna Campbell, referenced and defended the many ways in which she believes that TCUP 2.0 will be effective for Texans who could potentially be medical marijuana patients in other states while not leading Texas to become the supposed lawless hellscape of Colorado that she and some of her colleagues referenced.
Sen. Campbell directly mentioned time and time again the lack of federal medical research on cannabis, even when Sen. Jose Menendez brought up that the lack of research is due to cannabis’ Schedule I drug status. Campbell, who received a total of $153,850 in campaign “contributions” from health professionals or hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, believes that research on cannabis shouldn’t be federally funded and that there’s enough of a need for research that it will lead to privatization.
Although while Sen. Campbell stressed the importance of unbiased, scientific research on cannabis, she also mentioned that the research component of HB 3703 was removed directly by the doctor herself to speed up the aforementioned privatization.
“I took that portion out so that companies who wish to engage in research and development will invest their own dollars for proprietary findings, should they get one. As we move forward, we must move forward on the steps of research and not go haphazardly.” Campbell said before later openly admitting her prohibitionist views.
“I am not for legalizing marijuana, that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”
Hood County state senator Brian Birdwell only magnified the glaring examples of political prohibition. During his discussion of HB 3703, Birdwell mentioned his “highly guarded sense of danger of the direction that this (HB 3703) might take us to recreational use” and that he “wouldn’t be comfortable” with a bill more medically encompassing than HB 3703 because of “what he’s seen in Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Inexplicably, Birdwell then stressed his mostly irrational and unproven fears of cannabidiol (CBD) “becoming the bridge to full recreational use” and the bill becoming the next opioid crisis. I’m not kidding. An actual elected official in the Texas Legislature is gravely worried that a substance that you could consume mountains of without receiving any psychoactive or lethal effect could somehow result in an average of 66,000 overdose deaths annually.
Birdwell’s most egregious claim for not supporting cannabis legalization or reform in the slightest however was somehow due to the brutal murder of a very famous veteran constituent of his, “American Sniper” and war hero Chris Kyle. The famous Navy SEAL was murdered in 2013 by the heavily PTSD and schizophrenia-suffering Marine Corps veteran Eddie Ray Routh at a shooting range in Erath County. Routh clearly had well-documented mental illnesses by all accounts, yet Birdwell mentioned that those horrific actions committed on that February morning were instead fueled by a “multi-year marijuana user who claimed in his murder trial to have PTSD.”
House Bill 3703 is on its way to Governor Abbott’s desk, which he’ll sign if he stays true to his support of TCUP. Yet even with the addition of autism along with a few other conditions, the prohibitionist standpoints of several Texas lawmakers is still crystal clear even decades into the massive failure of the War on Drugs.