Senate Revisions Put Medical THC Plan
at Risk of Crash as Leverage Chip for Ban
Capitol Inside
May 31, 2025
Texas Senate Republicans may have given Governor Greg Abbott added incentive to veto a THC prohibition with 11th-hour maneuvering that could dilute or kill a medical marijuana expansion that they've used as a chip in a push for the bill that would wipe out a cannabis industry that's grown like gang busters since they backed a bill that created.
With a midnight deadline on Saturday for the distribution of conference committee reports, the Senate's last-minute alterations to the Compassionate Use program in House Bill 46 could have set the stage for a collapse that would be seen as an epic slap in the face of military veterans.
The medical cannabis measure and a civil liability proposal that's one of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's top priorities in Senate Bill 30 were two of the few attention-getting pieces of legislation that had yet to be resolved early Saturday afternoon with time ticking away for deals that would have to be approved by Sunday night. The regular session is set to expire on Monday at midnight.
The Senate threw a new wrinkle on Saturday into the Legislature's scramble to get a new two-year state budget in place before time runs out when its members voted to go outside the bounds of a conference committee report that it filed for the spending plan in Senate Bill 1 on Wednesday. But the Senate voted unanimously to ratify the record spending plan at 2:30 p.m. today.
The House and Senate both appointed conference committees on Friday for an attempt to hammer out differences between the two chambers on SB 30 - a proposal that would limit damages based on medical expenses for plaintiffs who were injured in highway crashes and or other event that were no fault of their own.
SB 30 is Patrick's 30th highest-ranking priority as a bill that's number one on the list of leading issues in the eyes of the big-giving Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC in an alliance that includes the Texas Trucking Association. The Senate set the stage for the final weekend showdown when it refused to concur on Thursday in House amendments that watered the measure down considerably.
But the Senate's deliberate approach on the medical marijuana plan in HB 46 raised the specter on Saturday that it could be setting the bill up to die without final votes despite Patrick's promise to back a substantial expansion in exchange for a THC ban they approved in a monumental state of panic last week.
Patrick waited until Saturday afternoon before announcing the Senate's conferees for HB 46 on a team that GOP State Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock will lead as the chairman. The Senate negotiators include Republican State Senators Paul Bettencourt of Houston, Bryan Hughes of Mineola and Tan Parker of Flower Mound. Patrick tapped Democratic State Senator Jose Menéndez of San Antonio for the conference committee on HB 46 as a major player in the fight for the bill.
GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows assembled a negotiating team on Friday for HB 46 with the bill's author - State Rep. Ken King of Canadian - as the chairman with fellow Republican State Reps. Giovanni Capriglione of Southlake, Katrina Pierson of Rockwall and Tony Tinderholt of Arlington backing him up on the conference committee along with Democratic State Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie. Pierson is the lone freshman lawmaker on the conference committee on HB 46.
King - one of the House's most powerful members of the State Affairs Committee - failed to put up a fight to save a regulatory plan for the booming THC industry that Patrick pressured GOP representatives into gutting in a state of panic last week when they replaced it with the ban he'd demanded.
But Patrick and Senate Republicans made it clear at a circus-like press conference this week that they're scared that a veto on SB 3 could be on the horizon. The lieutenant governor's credibility suffered a potentially significant self-inflicted wound after the media event when an Austin company where he obtained a smattering of THC edibles for shock value props called him out for a pack of blatant lies he told about their products there.
more to come ...
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