
Texas Might Have Accidentally Decriminalized Marijuana - benryon
https://www.gq.com/story/texas-weed-laws-oops
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coderintherye
A bit sensationalist, because you can make the same argument for all other
states which have produced legislation around the legal limit of THC in hemp.
Most states are drawing from the federal legislation which denotes a limit of
0.3% of delta-9 THC. Testing is not expensive though it's not cheap (it's $200
in Oregon)[1]. I believe prosecutors are just complaining cause it makes their
job harder. The price of testing will continue to come down, in fact there's a
YCombinator company in the latest batch that has developed another testing
method for field tests.

That said, I hope this leads to all states decriminalizing or fully legalizing
marijuana. Regardless, when conservative grandparents are using and promoting
CBD it is clear that hemp is here to stay.

Edit: There is some nuance to this [2]

[1] This is what we, Cascadia Blooms, pay in Oregon to test the crops fro our
farm and you can see our test results at
[https://www.cascadiablooms.com/direct/store](https://www.cascadiablooms.com/direct/store)
if you want to see the breakdown that comes from a typical test.

[2] [https://hempindustrydaily.com/usda-national-thc-test-for-
hem...](https://hempindustrydaily.com/usda-national-thc-test-for-hemp-as-
challenging-as-you-think-it-is/)

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byteshock
Nice promotion

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LyndsySimon
Despite it being the title for the article, I'd argue that the statement
"Texas might have accidentally decriminalized marijuana" is entirely false.

All that's happened is that the threshold for successful prosecution has
changed slightly - not even necessarily "been lowered", but "changed" \- and
the state's forensic labs aren't yet set up to deal with the new requirements.

People arrested now who fall under this gray area will likely be released
without charges, but there is nothing at all stopping them from arresting them
again and charging them next week/month/year when the labs catch up.

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cbanek
People in Texas must be smoking some bad stuff if people are getting released
because they can't prove it's over or under .3% THC. But I bet they have the
precision to determine anything worthy of smoking (for example, some
california flowers test at 20+%) compared to hemp.

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tyingq
There's only one state sanctioned lab capable of showing "percentage" versus
"some thc is present". The costs and wait are prohibitive relative to a
misdemeanor charge.

It's a temporary situation, and some labs will eventually step in. But there
are counties and cities right now just not enforcing (for smallish amounts).
Which is unusual for Texas.

