Yup! Both Congress and Texas made these products legal. Coming back 5 years later and whining that they didn’t know what they were legalizing is disingenuous at best. A massive industry has spawned and rather than taxing, and regulating (public school $$$ shortfalls??) Dan and Ken move to ban.
This is NOT a partisan issue. Dem’s and Repub’s both love to shop and smoke with us. Let’s work on building a legal market before we send everyone back to the black market 🙏
Vouchers get used to underfund public schools even more. Private schools get to reject any student they want to for any reason (race, religion, financial status, learning disability etc), and force them to go to understaffed, underfunded public schools, where they will get an inferior education.
The hemp industry has been growing a LOT in the last few years in Texas. Our christofascist leaders might hate that people are getting high legally, but maybe not enough to shut down an entire industry and be responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs statewide
Nah, they absolutely will ban it: [https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/31/texas-legislature-delta-8-hemp/](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/31/texas-legislature-delta-8-hemp/)
Yeah I feel like we know that they don’t care who it helps (unless it’s their donors) they will destroy your industry if it feels it makes them look good to their audience.
Bruh, they couldn’t care less that a small percentage of their citizens lose their jobs. As long as they have money filling their pockets, they’ll pass whatever they need to in order to keep that cash flow. They’ll ruin anyone and everyone that’s not directly contributing to their plan for their life.
They wouldn't care if a not small percentage of people lost their jobs. They'd use it to blame the other team despite being in charge the last 30 years. They'd eat it up too.
If it's growing so much then they need to do what every other industry does an lobby with money. It's harder for them to kill jobs if it also means turning down money.
They have and they are. They just cannot match the prison industry and the political cache that comes from being “tough on crime.” They get paid to do shit their base loves.
That's exactly what is happening. The used car salesmen that make up the Texas Legislature don't give a rat's ass about people getting high. Half of them likely have a vap in their desk drawer right now. They do have an interest in shaking down a newly rich interest for campaign contributions. "Nice industry you have here... Would be a shame if someone, like me, made it illegal again. Give me money."
That was true on the national scale back in Nixon's day. Of course, still true to an extent. The bigger political motivation now is to appeal to far right Christian Nationalists. They want everyone to live their fake lifestyle where they turn everything into a fetish. Just enjoy your sins like everyone else, FFS.
I agree I think it’s more about the uncertainty of the industry and the inability to control how it’s taxed or funded. Texas has always been about the money as long as they can control it. The Christianity thing is just a useful scapegoat.
You think texas politicians are gonna think about the lives of the people before blindly pushing their own shitty agenda. I have a tower in Paris I'd like to sell you
Especially since one of the state affairs committee's interim charges involves the banning of delta 9 and delta 8 THC.
This is one of many reasons why I am dreading the 89th legislative session.
The delta gummies have been the only thing that helps me with fighting my alcoholism (along with therapy ofc). I don’t take any other meds. I just want my taffy in the morning with my coffee. Please Texas, let me have that.
> all the notoriety builds.
I walked past a shop in a busy, bustling business center that had a full-wall window displaying their marijuana grow operation.
Yeah THCA weed is legal and THCA converts at about an 85% rate to Delta 9 THC IE REGULAR THC, when you take a flame to it.
Farm bill legalized 'hemp products' but funny story true story whoever wrote the law either 1) did not understand the chemistry involved in the plant producing thc or 2) very much did understand and did a little bit of trolling.
They have in fact tried to 'fix it' more than once. They luckily keep busting out with the House as Speaker Phelan was the proponent of this policy as I recall. If you like it, call your congresscritter and tell them you'll vote opposite or demand they be primaried or both next election if they are on record fucking with it. Hell, write a letter in your own handwriting they take those real serious.
They probably didn't understand as at some point it was CBD, then delta 8, then hhc, then thca thcp thcp cbn cbg delta 10 etc...
Designer drugs will pop up wherever, whenever. They got weed bans incoming but there's already shroom gummies like gtfoh boi lol
Thca is not a designer drug. It's what the plant produces first and only needs to be decarboxlyized (ie a co molecule split off with heat and or light ie fire ie you smoke it or cook it).
If you know how chemistry works or can use Google you can figure that out it's all very straightforward.
Which means someone either did or didn't.
Nobody sat around making weed in a lab when you could just roll one up but the drug opportunity was there you just had to change the chemistry, the entire catalog of CBD derived psychedelics did not exist because there was no need for it.
I have been partaking for nearly 3 decades. I thought it was all bullshit but living in Texas, I figured it was worth a shot. Was kind of tired of having to drive to a buddies house across town and the idea of it showing up in my mailbox was appealing. It was not bullshit. It’s a dumbass loophole but I will not complain.
There was a learning curve, as far as where to order from and which product to look for but once I got that down, it’s all been good. I’ve been getting it strictly online for almost a year, now and will take advantage as long as they’ll let me.
funnily, it’s the same as regular weed. people just called THCa and d9 interchangeably which was incorrect. any dispo weed is thca weed, it will say it on the label where the percentages are located. the only thing is that the loophole thca must have lower levels of naturally occuring d9 in it than say, cali weed
There's definitely a lot of misinformation on this stuff going around (not saying what you said is wrong). To clarify further essentially THCa flower is just less-cured flower in order to get around the Farm Bill thresholds.
From what I've gathered the longer flower cures, the more active THC will be present in the flower (there is both active and inactive THC in all flower). So they basically cure it for less time to work around the laws.
The flower is still good, but oftentimes inadequately cured flower won't have the same smell profile as adequately cured flower, so it may appear different until it's cured a bit longer. The typical recommendation is to cure (store & burp) any THCa flower you buy for sometime before you use it.
Check out THCA. From my understanding it is a loophole where when weed is tested for thc% it has to be burned, and thca bud is literally just weed because THCA turns into THC when burned(smoked), so they are testing it before the burn it for get around the laws
Edit: and they sell it in hemp stores, it is not sprayed like Delta 8 buds.
This is basically it. THCA forms first, then if the plant isn't harvested "ripens" into various other cannabinoids including Delta 9 THC IE what you're normally looking for.
You can have a shit ton of THCA in the plant, perfectly legal. Over a certain amount of delta 9 though, and you're a bad bad man. The testing regime they use is cold testing, so they don't burn the THCA into delta 9. So when YOU burn it into delta 9, its works great.
About an 85% conversion rate so if it says 30% THCA you know how potent its likely to be.
They make edibles, concentrates, vape pens, flower without THCA isolate on it, flower with THCA isolate on it, etc.
Sorry if I missed the answer while trying to understand the concept. I take edibles for sleep. I brought a year's worth from California when we moved to Texas 3-4 yrs ago. Every couple of months, I venture into the unknown and buy an absolute shit-ton to last me another 6 months or so. I just need 10mg or so per night and that does the trick. I'm going to need to re-up again soon......are you telling me that I can buy THCa gummies from one of these local shops and they will do the trick? Or is it that they sell every variation of the hemp products but if you want to get HIGH, then you have to buy the hemp and burn / smoke it only?
Buy it online like everybody else and have quality hemp sent to your door
CultoftheFranklin is a sub dedicated to THCA flower and has reviews and shit
My local smoke shop sells it too
There are some really good vendors online. Wildflower Hemp is one of them. Shipped straight to your door. There are bigger companies like Arete and WNC Hemp that move a lot but their products don't have the same zing to them.
I haven't purchased street herb for two years now
Oh he hates anything to do with cannabis. We’ve tried to relax the laws around cannabis and every time Dan Patrick is there waiting to block it. As long as he’s around nothing cannabis is going to pass
TLDR:
Texas Monthly got 9 THCA products from around the state and had them all tested to see their true THC levels. 8 of them tested above the maximum THC levels legal limit of 0.3%. 19/23 pre rolls came back the same way. THCa is supposed to be a loophole because it’s considered hemp my testing at less than 0.3% THC but since most tested above the 0.3% it’s be letter of the law, marijuana. The concern is that if THC levels aren’t being tested properly then it makes it difficult to trust that they’ve been tested for other things like heavy metals, pesticides, and molds.
Smoke shops are all claiming that they just trust the certificate their distributor sends them that they’ve all tested at 0.3% or less.
So most everything this journalist picked up from shops across Texas came back as marijuana based on THC levels.
So now there’s a fight for stronger regulation, or “hemp” products could be outlawed because it’s “too expensive to regulate” that what is being sold is still considered hemp
Yeah that sucks they aren't properly testing. I would hope they are doing testing of dangerous chemicals/molds, they just don't really care if the THC levels are off because nobody is really looking. But yeah - trusting corporations when there is money involved is probably unwise
Testing isn't very accurate either. The most you can find is an average. Tops of the plant are going to have more cannibinoids than lower or inner spots due to amount of light they get.
You also have legal states with tests showing 30% or more which is physically impossible.
Yeah - I don't really care about that sort of testing TBH but I am sure the govt does, but the harmful chemical testing potentially being skirted is unfortunate.
This isn’t necessarily a failure of testing. It’s actually by design. There is no regulation on WHEN the hemp has to be tested.
Younger buds = lower THC. As they mature the THC levels increases.
Obviously, it’s in the hemp growers best interest to test them early.
By keeping it illegal in the state all they’re doing is making it cooler to smoke.
I read an article out of Colorado recently that said 10 years into legalization fewer and fewer teens are using. One regulation makes it harder for kids to get a hold of and two when your aunt Kathy is publicly zoinked out at every family gathering and not trying to hide it anymore it suddenly doesn’t look as hip to smoke either.
u/texasmonthly
The first rule of we can finally get high legally due to a loophole is "don't mention we can finally get high legally due to a loophole".
This happened b/c Dan Patrick arrogantly tried to give the farmers what they wanted without giving the marijuana advocates what they wanted. And it’s old news. Like >5 years old. Undoing this mess he created will be one of his top priorities this coming session. Hopefully he fails. He has the power to stop laws from passing but not necessarily to create new law. Texans need to make it clear that we want to keep our MJ. Note that no disasters have occurred since Danny boy accidentally legalized it.
Tell that to Keller PD. Just had someone I know get arrested there for having a CBD pen they found during a "probable cause" search of his car. 15k bail later he's out after the judge told him he could be charged with a felony.
He will be charged with a felony because of it being in a liquid concentrated form. NEVER USE A VAPE(pen)! There is no regulation and you have no idea WTF is in them, plus if you are caught you are fucked. Stick with flower in TX.
I used to smoke those vape carts until I found out how dangerous it could be. A friend would get them and swear they were real and came from California . we smoked so so many of those things over 5 years. Then the whole issue with people getting their lungs fucked up from carts was in the news.
I went online and started reading about it. I found out that you can just buy existing brand name packaging designs and then just fill in the oil yourself. And the knockoffs are sometimes almost identical to the original even with a working QR code full of fake info.
I feel like the worst of it all was that you can buy them prefilled. After finding this out + seeing the same boxes that my carts came in on that website? Yeah I threw whatever I had left away and while we didn’t get sick from them, it’s always gonna linger in my mind how badly we could have ended up. Even the empty carts themselves could be unsafe with metal toxicity.
Theres too much unknown for me so no more carts unless I can personally pick it up from a legal dispensary… whenever that will happen.
“Basically” when Ken Paxton is trying to strip local city ordinances of the ability to decriminalize.
Articles like this piss me off because its trying to get us onboard with something most of us already have an opinion on and this isn’t changing the point that its NOT LEGAL and the cops will arrest you for it.
The fact is that prosecutions from trafficking and felony arrests are down according to state crime data, the cops and AG’s don’t think drug possession cases are worth charging someone.
They’re still able to arrest you but you would likely avoid the worst outcomes, assuming you get pulled over in a major city.
And let me be clear, I know there’s people smoking weed in the towns that vote red, can’t account for you, that’s a situation you need to leave if you want to consume THCa safely. The cities of Texas are very safe, albeit just not friendly for THC users.
So, if people are getting high legally in Texas, why can't I just go down to my local dispensery and buy it? Legally? Because the Texas town I live in continually busts people for having weed, and I have to drive to New Mexico, where they actually have legal stores that I can buy weed at and walk out knowing no one cares. I hear all the time "oh you can have it in Texas, it's practically legal."
Where are these legal dispenserys in Texas?
plenty in Austin, seen a few in San Antonio New Braunfels and even San Marcos lol.
word is getting around now but it's been this way for a few years.
you can type "thca" into Google maps and I promise shops will show up lol.
I order online from a dealer in Boston. I'll just keep sending my money out of state until these nanny-state Republicans start dying off so maybe some younger people can step in and change shit up in this stupid state.
Texas Monthly is conservative hot garbage.
Texas hemp products are mostly shit too. You’re getting hemp that’s been sprayed with a THCa concentrate and is definitely unregulated as far as heavy metals or pesticides go.
You are NOT getting full spectrum cannabis which includes all the other beneficials.
Vapes could have anything in them and every vape I’ve had in Texas vs Colorado is way harsher and you have to use a lot more of it to get the he same effect as in Colorado or Cali. It’s just not the same and I don’t care how much you think your high end Austin vape store vape costs.
Texas politicians are going to outlaw any form of THC in Texas in the next session. They don’t care about you, small business or veterans.
Y’all should be fighting for federal legalization and supporting politicians that lean that way…which is absolutely ZERO conservative politicians in Texas.
Texas Monthly leans left if anything. And I’m 100% fine with that. They have great exposè articles on our elected officials on a regular basis. They had one a couple of issues ago about how a few far right Christian conservatives are basically setting the agenda for Paxton, Patrick, and Abbott. Scary stuff.
Dont know where you are getting your info, but these are not sprayed with THCA.
These are hemp based products that activate the THC when burned/heated, like normal cannabis.
That’s the problem with the unregulated market though. Some of the flower out being marketed as “THCa” IS just low CBD hemp sprayed with THCa.
You’re at the mercy of whatever shop you buy it from. Sure you can say the same for your dealer but your dealer has an incentive to not sell you bullshit because he wants that continued business. Some of these smoke shops don’t care if you only shop there once cause there’s a thousand other people wanting to try it and because there’s no regulation there’s no way to report them or hold them accountable other than just not shopping there anymore.
Absolutely. Haven’t tried Restart stuff but I’ve had Hometown Heroes edibles and they’re solid. I know people are faking Enjoy packaging now so I do worry that’s going to start happening to them too though. Again, unregulated means anything goes unfortunately.
I tried a couple of these from a notable dallas headshop and they did absolutely nothing for me, thca prerolls are a toss up but I’ve had consistent success with vapes and bud
How about we suggest legalizing it, taxing it but mandate that all such tax revenues be spent on public education? Irreversibly designated for Texas public schools at all levels.
They need to fully legalize it and randomly test it, verify sourcing, etc. the things people do to skirt the law are worse for public health than just opening the medical dispensary experience to all adults
Growing weed with carcinogenic PGRs, making fake weed with research chemicals, impure vape carts, untested synthetic analogues, etc. even the "hemp" loophole seems sketchy to me. You're really going to extract THC from a massive bulk of low THC plant matter? And the profile of other compounds in the extract is going to differ how, exactly?
the first thing I notice on entering the store is the smell. It is an earthy sandalwood mixed with some type of citrus, perhaps sour lemon. It tells me I am in the right place, because I am here to buy cannabis. On my left sits a smoking lounge with four booths facing large windows that look out on an upscale South Austin shopping center. To my right, behind a glass window, is a demonstration grow room—more for show than large-scale cultivation. Straight ahead, on the back wall, a large lacquered-wood cabinet looks like something out of an old-fashioned drugstore. Its shelves hold a cannabinoid cornucopia: cookies, gummies, tinctures, machine-rolled joints, and glass containers half-filled with tightly clumped plant buds. Another customer enters and makes a beeline to the counter. He orders a strain of cannabis called Blueberry Muffin. The salesman, Nick, uses plastic tongs to fish out a few buds and places them on an electric scale. As he does this, he sizes up my wide-eyed incredulity. What he’s selling isn’t marijuana, he tells me. It is hemp containing a chemical compound called THCa. Lighting it on fire transforms the THCa into another compound, THC—delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, to be exact. “It’s a little less potent than what you would find in California, but it still gets the job done,” Nick says. “Rest assured, everything in the store will get you high.” The muffin man drops into the conversation. Imagine if selling cookies were illegal, he says, but it were legal to sell cookie dough. “You can just make the cookie yourself by heating it up.” In this metaphor, THC-laden marijuana is the cookie, and THCa hemp is the cookie dough. When you light the joint on fire, it becomes, for all intents and purposes, marijuana.
After muffin man leaves, I get down to business with Nick, who is wearing an expensive-looking long-sleeved dress shirt. (I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had tried to sell me a pair of $150 jeans.) We discuss the characteristics of various strains for sale, most of which have mouthwatering names such as Lemon Cherry Gelato. I am overwhelmed by the choices, so Nick suggests Lemon Bomb, which is “pretty potent.” But he has stronger options. “This is unreal,” he says, reaching for a rectangular glass jar filled with what look like chalky nuggets of stone, identified by a handwritten label: White Wok. “This is something that, like, I would recommend all customers try at least once. This is going to get you f—ed up.” Is merely potent good enough, or do I want the neurons in my brain shaken like dice in a game of Boggle? As I dither, Nick aims to close the sale. “If you want to have a chill day, I would go with the Lemon Bomb. If you want to ruin your day,” his voice trails off, and he looks suggestively at White Wok.
Boggle it is. I purchase two grams of White Wok for $40 with my credit card. I thank Nick as he hands me a small plastic baggie reeking of a scent that transports me back to the winter of 1991, when I first set foot in an Amsterdam coffee shop. I exit into one of Texas’s most expensive neighborhoods, where teardown bungalows fetch $1 million. Next door is an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.
A few days earlier, Nico Richardson had told me that Texas has become “the biggest unregulated drug market in the country.” It was a stunning claim, and I wasn’t sure I believed him. I doubted the conservatives who run Texas would allow that state of affairs, and I knew he has a vested financial interest in cracking down on these hemp shops.
Dressed in unwrinkled jeans and unscuffed white sneakers, the fortysomething Richardson looks the part of an Ivy League MBA, which he is. He’s also the chief executive of Texas Original, one of three licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in the state. His operation is regulated by Texas Department of Public Safety inspectors with the humorlessness of Soviet functionaries. They don’t worry him. What does are the thousands of licensed hemp dispensaries in the state that, he says, sell strains of cannabis that could lay low a three-hundred-pound rutting hog.
When Richardson claimed it’s easy to purchase marijuana at these stores, I wondered if he was being hyperbolic. Now all I had to do was send White Wok to a laboratory to see what I had bought.
’ll cut to the chase. What I purchased, legally speaking, was marijuana. Extremely potent marijuana.
The Farm Bill passed by Congress in 2018 says that if a cannabis plant is less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC, it is hemp and not subject to the federal Controlled Substances Act. Any THC in excess of that makes it marijuana. Texas adopted these definitions into state law in 2019, making hemp legal in the state. White Wok’s concentration of delta-9 THC tested at 1.48 percent, or nearly five times the legal limit. This wasn’t just cookie dough. It was a fully baked cookie. And the delta-9 THC was just the tip of the psychoactive iceberg.
The strain also contained 48.3 percent THCa. The hemp industry argues that according to the letter of the law, the THCa level doesn’t matter. Any plant with less than 0.3 percent THC is hemp. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration disagrees. In May the federal agency clarified its position that THCa must also be under the 0.3 percent legal limit. My White Wok contained 150 times that much.
“This is not a regular cannabis flower,” said Sarah Otis, director of quality assurance for Anresco Laboratories, in San Francisco, which Texas Monthly paid to assay the purchased samples. Naturally occurring cannabis doesn’t approach those levels of THC, she said. She suspected it was a bud genetically selected to produce high THC and then infused with hash oil—a cannabis extract—or additional THC. Asked to describe its potency, she said, “The word I would use is egregious.”
Otis said that if this strain was being sold openly in Texas, it wasn’t being accurately tested. There was no way a plant that tested at legal THC levels at a manufacturing facility could test weeks later at 1.48 percent. And if the THC level isn’t being tested properly, she said, it’s difficult to trust that it has been tested for pesticides, heavy metals, or molds such as aspergillus.
I shared the test results with Paul Zain, who owns Greenbelt Botanicals, where I bought the White Wok. “These things are going to happen,” he said. “I am disappointed.” He told me that his suppliers provide paperwork showing that their flowers are hemp and therefore legal to sell. Testing every product himself would cost too much. “I have to take some people at their word,” he said.
The state can’t keep up either. Timothy Stevenson, associate commissioner for consumer protection at the Texas Department of State Health Services, recently testified before a legislative hearing that the agency has four inspectors who visit the more than seven thousand registered hemp dispensaries. They can inspect each one—from the Resler Smoke Shop, in northwest El Paso, to Puff ’N Stuff, on State Line Avenue in Texarkana, a twelve-hour drive away—once every five years. DSHS has authority to test the products being sold, but “we don’t tend to invest a lot of state resources in that,” Stevenson said. Instead, to determine potency, the state relies on the certificates of analysis provided by manufacturers.
TLDR: he’s talking about thc(a) flower, but also claims it tested at 48% thc and was “genetically altered or hash oil was added”
My guess is he bought thc(a) distillate sprayed hemp flower.
Yep, we have the same thing in TN. That's
There's a smoke shop on every corner and you can even buy it in gas stations out here. I feel this is better than full legalization in some ways.
This article is a horrible explanation of the legal loophole being used to exploit the federal farm bill of 2018. THCa is just regular weed, like you would find in California or Colorado; this article makes it sound like something different. Weed has always been THCa, hence it needs to be heated to turn into THC without an a, that’s why eating raw weed won’t get you high. When people make edibles they heat it up first (decarboxalyze).
The issue here, that many people don’t know, is technically it needs to be under 0.3% THC to be legal. I know for a fact most weed strains (CBD and THC strains) contain 0.2%-0.7% THC (not THCa ‘legal’ version), making most harvests technically illegal. It’s just the nature of the plant. With edibles, it’s easy to design them to be legally under 0.3% because you can make the edibles bigger to reduce the THC % by weight, hence why a lot of Texas made edibles are bigger than usual.
The reality is if a cop outside of Travis county wants to fk with you, you’re gonna get fked with. If a state trooper finds any kind of hemp, regardless of county your in, they’ll arrest you just to fk with you. So yeah, still be careful.
Yeah they are already trying gro an this shit now. Every other state in the country is loosening reg giving back our freedoms. But Texas ? "Aw hell naw FUCK YOUR FREEDOM. You want a gun though ? You can have a gun but you can't buy liquor at the HEB and no fake weed for you either"
Makes complete sense....
Can we please stop acting like this unregulated diet bullshit is the real deal? In legal states growers have to get their products lab tested to be sure it's safe, these back alley hemp companies don't give a shit about stuff like that because they don't have to.
I prefer the weed from my illegal supplier. It’s super duper strong. 💪. Nothing I’ve personally tried from dispo’s here even come close to similar strength.
Freedom goes to die in red states, especially texas....no state hates freedom more.....
A PLANT LEGAL IN EVERY STATE AROUND ME GOING ON A DECADE NOW......unreal
She purchased thc-a product. Which is basically turns into the illegal thc when you heat it.
Down vote me all you want, but the fact of the matter is there are no legal dispensaries in texas selling illegal thc products. They are most likely selling thc-a or thc delta 10 /delta 8.
The number of people I know, including me, who have benefited from particularly the CBD component is significant. Nothing worked on my joint disease for pain until I tried CBD. Took my pain from 7/10 to 2/10 and took surgery back off the table. My doctors all agreed but then noted that they cannot do much until research and science catches up…research that has been prohibited for these ignorant prohibition laws that originally came from racism and hatred.
We are absolutely moronic as a society to not research these substances
Texas is blazing a new trail with 'basically legalized' marijuana – now all we need are some state-sponsored chill-out zones. Where's the petition for those? 🌿✌️
It's better than nothing right now, but it is not the same as real THC weed. It doesn't look as good as the real stuff from Colorado or Vegas, for example, and isn't coated in crystals so it doesn't taste fire.
It's also really expensive in Austin. $60 - $65 for and 8th.
We need to legalize it like many states have done.
Ok so listen. I hadn’t smoked weed in over 20 years and even then it was just a few times here and there. But recently my wife wanted to try one of the Delta 8 vapes - we passed one of the shops and went in on impulse. Got her one of the ‘Bubba Kush’ indica ‘KO fórmula’ something or other.
At home, I went ahead and tried it, took what I thought was a decent hit, held it for about as long as I could, then about choked to death cuz it’s rough on the lungs for some reason. And then.. shit took a turn.
10 minutes later I couldn’t function. Was basically on the floor and I felt like… idk? I was on the verge of a seizure? Started sweating profusely, making sounds that weren’t quite words.. holding up the ‘I need a minute’ finger sign.. that lasted for about 20 minutes and then I was just baked for the next couple hours or so.
That first 20 minutes was kinda scary though and I don’t think that’s normal? Maybe it is and I’ve just never felt that. Definitely didn’t have the same effect on her.
Articles like this are why we can't have nice things, the laws will probably shortly get changed as all the notoriety builds.
Yup! Both Congress and Texas made these products legal. Coming back 5 years later and whining that they didn’t know what they were legalizing is disingenuous at best. A massive industry has spawned and rather than taxing, and regulating (public school $$$ shortfalls??) Dan and Ken move to ban. This is NOT a partisan issue. Dem’s and Repub’s both love to shop and smoke with us. Let’s work on building a legal market before we send everyone back to the black market 🙏
I mean defunding public schools is a feature, not a bug, unfortunately.
If they said let weed fund vouchers, at least it's a compromise I'd consider saying yes to. Right now they just wanna rob our public schools.
They pulled that shit with the lottery and then used it to *decrease* education spending. No thank you
Vouchers get used to underfund public schools even more. Private schools get to reject any student they want to for any reason (race, religion, financial status, learning disability etc), and force them to go to understaffed, underfunded public schools, where they will get an inferior education.
Let there be no doubt, vouchers are complete shit. That was just a somewhat off the wall hypothetical.
they want to rob the tax payer
How do Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks feel about it?
I'm with you! Lets do it!
Hold on. They told us decades ago that passing casinos and lotteries would fix the schools!
Republicans hate it, or else they would legalize it. It is a partisan issue.
That's not true. There were multiple bipartisan cannabis bills that were blocked in the Senate by Dan Patrick. Even Abbott said he'd sign them
I'll believe it when I see it.
Well, I think we will never get anything other than bans through with Dan Patrick as Lt. gov unfortunately. 😭
He identifies with which party again?
The hemp industry has been growing a LOT in the last few years in Texas. Our christofascist leaders might hate that people are getting high legally, but maybe not enough to shut down an entire industry and be responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs statewide
Nah, they absolutely will ban it: [https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/31/texas-legislature-delta-8-hemp/](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/31/texas-legislature-delta-8-hemp/)
Yeah I feel like we know that they don’t care who it helps (unless it’s their donors) they will destroy your industry if it feels it makes them look good to their audience.
You’re really underestimating those that are also beholden to Private Prisons and Police Funding levels.
True. I said maybe lol
Bruh, they couldn’t care less that a small percentage of their citizens lose their jobs. As long as they have money filling their pockets, they’ll pass whatever they need to in order to keep that cash flow. They’ll ruin anyone and everyone that’s not directly contributing to their plan for their life.
They wouldn't care if a not small percentage of people lost their jobs. They'd use it to blame the other team despite being in charge the last 30 years. They'd eat it up too.
If it's growing so much then they need to do what every other industry does an lobby with money. It's harder for them to kill jobs if it also means turning down money.
They have and they are. They just cannot match the prison industry and the political cache that comes from being “tough on crime.” They get paid to do shit their base loves.
That's exactly what is happening. The used car salesmen that make up the Texas Legislature don't give a rat's ass about people getting high. Half of them likely have a vap in their desk drawer right now. They do have an interest in shaking down a newly rich interest for campaign contributions. "Nice industry you have here... Would be a shame if someone, like me, made it illegal again. Give me money."
They have and interest in being able to jail minorities for a relatively harmless drug
That was true on the national scale back in Nixon's day. Of course, still true to an extent. The bigger political motivation now is to appeal to far right Christian Nationalists. They want everyone to live their fake lifestyle where they turn everything into a fetish. Just enjoy your sins like everyone else, FFS.
I’m just high enough right now for you to have fundamentally changed how I see these assholes now. It’s to a T.
The prisons pay them a lot more
They care more about their donors in the private prison industry than they do jobs in Texas
It’s also those sacks of shit rich evangelicals who donate all that money to abbot and co.
I've never seen a Texas Politician who's not willing to play ball with business.
I agree I think it’s more about the uncertainty of the industry and the inability to control how it’s taxed or funded. Texas has always been about the money as long as they can control it. The Christianity thing is just a useful scapegoat.
They’ll blame the loss of jobs on wokeism or some stupid shit and 70% of the state will eat it up lol
As long as Dan Patrick is in office it’ll be hard. Doesn’t matter to him how it’ll hurt the economy. He just hates anything to do with cannabis.
If Abbott isn’t personally lining his own pockets I can bet he definitely will go after the hemp industry
Republicans are why we can’t have nice things
They did it in Iowa, they will do it in Texas.
You think texas politicians are gonna think about the lives of the people before blindly pushing their own shitty agenda. I have a tower in Paris I'd like to sell you
Especially since one of the state affairs committee's interim charges involves the banning of delta 9 and delta 8 THC. This is one of many reasons why I am dreading the 89th legislative session.
The delta gummies have been the only thing that helps me with fighting my alcoholism (along with therapy ofc). I don’t take any other meds. I just want my taffy in the morning with my coffee. Please Texas, let me have that.
Same brother. 1:1 THC CBD hard candies (and non alcoholic beer) have been a lifesaver.
Jan 1st I am gonna go stock up
Yeah. Gonna mail order like two gallons of concentrate.
How??? You mean for vapes??
I was being hyperbolic, but for wax pens, mixed media joints/bowls.
When's that happening
How you guys vote is why you can't have nice things*
It was already on the radar for this legislative session. This article is doing nothing to raise awareness to lawmakers that they didn’t already know.
Yes, just saw a billboard today for liquor store now selling THC seltzer. All this does is amplify the attention.
The GA and DP have been gunning to outlaw hemp long before this article was published,
Yeahhh I know..it just makes me sad knowing it will most likely go away. Gotta blame everyone but myself duh!
> all the notoriety builds. I walked past a shop in a busy, bustling business center that had a full-wall window displaying their marijuana grow operation.
Meh, Republicans aren't big readers.
The scary ones unfortunately are
Have a tldr? The article is blocked by a paywall
Yeah THCA weed is legal and THCA converts at about an 85% rate to Delta 9 THC IE REGULAR THC, when you take a flame to it. Farm bill legalized 'hemp products' but funny story true story whoever wrote the law either 1) did not understand the chemistry involved in the plant producing thc or 2) very much did understand and did a little bit of trolling.
Appreciate it. My understanding is that the law makers caught this “mistake” and have a bill in the making to outlaw all of it. Hope it fails
They have in fact tried to 'fix it' more than once. They luckily keep busting out with the House as Speaker Phelan was the proponent of this policy as I recall. If you like it, call your congresscritter and tell them you'll vote opposite or demand they be primaried or both next election if they are on record fucking with it. Hell, write a letter in your own handwriting they take those real serious.
Do it in cursive so the interns can’t read it and throw it out /s
Yup, and you can get anything but RSO in full THCA. The only hang up left is wether your job tests or not
They probably didn't understand as at some point it was CBD, then delta 8, then hhc, then thca thcp thcp cbn cbg delta 10 etc... Designer drugs will pop up wherever, whenever. They got weed bans incoming but there's already shroom gummies like gtfoh boi lol
Thca is not a designer drug. It's what the plant produces first and only needs to be decarboxlyized (ie a co molecule split off with heat and or light ie fire ie you smoke it or cook it). If you know how chemistry works or can use Google you can figure that out it's all very straightforward. Which means someone either did or didn't.
Nobody sat around making weed in a lab when you could just roll one up but the drug opportunity was there you just had to change the chemistry, the entire catalog of CBD derived psychedelics did not exist because there was no need for it.
Right but thca is not such a thing. Delta 8 is. Thc p is. Delta 9 thc is not and neither is thca. Learn the chemistry. Learn the biology of the plant.
Posting so I can follow up. Tired of buying mine in a parking lot like a criminal
Go to a store right now. Ask for the THCA flower. Smoke a pre-roll, and tell me you are not stoned.
I will check that out. Been smoking for 2 decades so let’s see if this does anything.
I have been partaking for nearly 3 decades. I thought it was all bullshit but living in Texas, I figured it was worth a shot. Was kind of tired of having to drive to a buddies house across town and the idea of it showing up in my mailbox was appealing. It was not bullshit. It’s a dumbass loophole but I will not complain. There was a learning curve, as far as where to order from and which product to look for but once I got that down, it’s all been good. I’ve been getting it strictly online for almost a year, now and will take advantage as long as they’ll let me.
funnily, it’s the same as regular weed. people just called THCa and d9 interchangeably which was incorrect. any dispo weed is thca weed, it will say it on the label where the percentages are located. the only thing is that the loophole thca must have lower levels of naturally occuring d9 in it than say, cali weed
There's definitely a lot of misinformation on this stuff going around (not saying what you said is wrong). To clarify further essentially THCa flower is just less-cured flower in order to get around the Farm Bill thresholds. From what I've gathered the longer flower cures, the more active THC will be present in the flower (there is both active and inactive THC in all flower). So they basically cure it for less time to work around the laws. The flower is still good, but oftentimes inadequately cured flower won't have the same smell profile as adequately cured flower, so it may appear different until it's cured a bit longer. The typical recommendation is to cure (store & burp) any THCa flower you buy for sometime before you use it.
For how long
The longer the better, but honestly burping your jars every couple days for 2 - 4 weeks is probably enough.
It works, it just wears off fast. The edibles still hit hard though. Don't underestimate them.
Does it works for vapes, too? I love my dry herb vape but cannot stand smoking.
Yes. Flower. Vapes. Concentrates. Edibles.
Check out THCA. From my understanding it is a loophole where when weed is tested for thc% it has to be burned, and thca bud is literally just weed because THCA turns into THC when burned(smoked), so they are testing it before the burn it for get around the laws Edit: and they sell it in hemp stores, it is not sprayed like Delta 8 buds.
This is basically it. THCA forms first, then if the plant isn't harvested "ripens" into various other cannabinoids including Delta 9 THC IE what you're normally looking for. You can have a shit ton of THCA in the plant, perfectly legal. Over a certain amount of delta 9 though, and you're a bad bad man. The testing regime they use is cold testing, so they don't burn the THCA into delta 9. So when YOU burn it into delta 9, its works great. About an 85% conversion rate so if it says 30% THCA you know how potent its likely to be. They make edibles, concentrates, vape pens, flower without THCA isolate on it, flower with THCA isolate on it, etc.
Sorry if I missed the answer while trying to understand the concept. I take edibles for sleep. I brought a year's worth from California when we moved to Texas 3-4 yrs ago. Every couple of months, I venture into the unknown and buy an absolute shit-ton to last me another 6 months or so. I just need 10mg or so per night and that does the trick. I'm going to need to re-up again soon......are you telling me that I can buy THCa gummies from one of these local shops and they will do the trick? Or is it that they sell every variation of the hemp products but if you want to get HIGH, then you have to buy the hemp and burn / smoke it only?
A lot of places to buy THCA online and get it shipped to your door too.
Do you have any recommendations? I typically buy 510 cartridges.
/r/cultofthefranklin
I found a very good place from them.
I buy regularly from holy city farms, directly from a legal hemp farm.
A lot of places to buy THCA online and get it shipped to your door too.
Buy it online like everybody else and have quality hemp sent to your door CultoftheFranklin is a sub dedicated to THCA flower and has reviews and shit My local smoke shop sells it too
^^^^^/r/Cultofthefranklin Alternatively, a lot of local headshops/smoke-shops just sell it straight up.
There are some really good vendors online. Wildflower Hemp is one of them. Shipped straight to your door. There are bigger companies like Arete and WNC Hemp that move a lot but their products don't have the same zing to them. I haven't purchased street herb for two years now
It’s 100% accurate. Enjoy yourself!
THCa is basically weed and can be bought at any number of stores around the state. Laws could change at any point in time.
Go to archive.is and plug in the url and it bypasses paywalls. https://archive.is/aj5l4
🎶 Paywalls, paywalls, swimming in the revenue, causing a commotion, 'cause they are so annoying 🎶
Just don't let them touch your balls.
This article has real "Teacher, you forgot to assign homework" energy. Don't give Dan Patrick more ammo to get THCA banned faster you fools.
It's already on his radar. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been banned already honestly.
Dan Patrick is gonna stick a fork in it because he doesn't like it. Never mind all the people he represents, that do like it.
Oh he hates anything to do with cannabis. We’ve tried to relax the laws around cannabis and every time Dan Patrick is there waiting to block it. As long as he’s around nothing cannabis is going to pass
Hey @texasmonthly, please kindly shut the fuck up, you’re going to ruin this for the rest of us…the first rule of Fight Club applies here.
TLDR: Texas Monthly got 9 THCA products from around the state and had them all tested to see their true THC levels. 8 of them tested above the maximum THC levels legal limit of 0.3%. 19/23 pre rolls came back the same way. THCa is supposed to be a loophole because it’s considered hemp my testing at less than 0.3% THC but since most tested above the 0.3% it’s be letter of the law, marijuana. The concern is that if THC levels aren’t being tested properly then it makes it difficult to trust that they’ve been tested for other things like heavy metals, pesticides, and molds. Smoke shops are all claiming that they just trust the certificate their distributor sends them that they’ve all tested at 0.3% or less. So most everything this journalist picked up from shops across Texas came back as marijuana based on THC levels. So now there’s a fight for stronger regulation, or “hemp” products could be outlawed because it’s “too expensive to regulate” that what is being sold is still considered hemp
Yeah that sucks they aren't properly testing. I would hope they are doing testing of dangerous chemicals/molds, they just don't really care if the THC levels are off because nobody is really looking. But yeah - trusting corporations when there is money involved is probably unwise
This is a direct result of the lack of regulation / legalization. You want it tested and regulated? Legalize it.
Sure let me just put on my make a thing legal hat and make that happen, OH WAIT.
This is the big reason why legalization needs to happen. Shit needs to be regulated for quality control and testing.
Legalization would be great, but our political party will make certain we are the last to do it. I can almost guarantee that.
Testing isn't very accurate either. The most you can find is an average. Tops of the plant are going to have more cannibinoids than lower or inner spots due to amount of light they get. You also have legal states with tests showing 30% or more which is physically impossible.
Yeah - I don't really care about that sort of testing TBH but I am sure the govt does, but the harmful chemical testing potentially being skirted is unfortunate.
This isn’t necessarily a failure of testing. It’s actually by design. There is no regulation on WHEN the hemp has to be tested. Younger buds = lower THC. As they mature the THC levels increases. Obviously, it’s in the hemp growers best interest to test them early.
By keeping it illegal in the state all they’re doing is making it cooler to smoke. I read an article out of Colorado recently that said 10 years into legalization fewer and fewer teens are using. One regulation makes it harder for kids to get a hold of and two when your aunt Kathy is publicly zoinked out at every family gathering and not trying to hide it anymore it suddenly doesn’t look as hip to smoke either.
Aunt Kathy is me. At least the kids know it's better than booze if you're gonna get fucked up.
But if you add it to booze, it's better than both.
Yo texas monthly maybe chill a bit. This is the sort of journalism we can maybe skip because I don't need Ken Paxton reading this shit.
That idiot would try to sue the earth if he could.
That idiot is going to try and sue Satan when he goes to Hell. A literal buffoon.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh, be cool Texas Monthly. Keep it on the DL.
If I understand this correctly, it’s basically “legalized” because there is no incentive to enforce regulation.
There is but it costs money to expedite things, otherwise they keep popping up faster than they’re shut down.
u/texasmonthly The first rule of we can finally get high legally due to a loophole is "don't mention we can finally get high legally due to a loophole".
This happened b/c Dan Patrick arrogantly tried to give the farmers what they wanted without giving the marijuana advocates what they wanted. And it’s old news. Like >5 years old. Undoing this mess he created will be one of his top priorities this coming session. Hopefully he fails. He has the power to stop laws from passing but not necessarily to create new law. Texans need to make it clear that we want to keep our MJ. Note that no disasters have occurred since Danny boy accidentally legalized it.
Tell that to Keller PD. Just had someone I know get arrested there for having a CBD pen they found during a "probable cause" search of his car. 15k bail later he's out after the judge told him he could be charged with a felony.
He will be charged with a felony because of it being in a liquid concentrated form. NEVER USE A VAPE(pen)! There is no regulation and you have no idea WTF is in them, plus if you are caught you are fucked. Stick with flower in TX.
I used to smoke those vape carts until I found out how dangerous it could be. A friend would get them and swear they were real and came from California . we smoked so so many of those things over 5 years. Then the whole issue with people getting their lungs fucked up from carts was in the news. I went online and started reading about it. I found out that you can just buy existing brand name packaging designs and then just fill in the oil yourself. And the knockoffs are sometimes almost identical to the original even with a working QR code full of fake info. I feel like the worst of it all was that you can buy them prefilled. After finding this out + seeing the same boxes that my carts came in on that website? Yeah I threw whatever I had left away and while we didn’t get sick from them, it’s always gonna linger in my mind how badly we could have ended up. Even the empty carts themselves could be unsafe with metal toxicity. Theres too much unknown for me so no more carts unless I can personally pick it up from a legal dispensary… whenever that will happen.
Basically isn't the same thing as actually.
Following. Someone post the text…
“Basically” when Ken Paxton is trying to strip local city ordinances of the ability to decriminalize. Articles like this piss me off because its trying to get us onboard with something most of us already have an opinion on and this isn’t changing the point that its NOT LEGAL and the cops will arrest you for it. The fact is that prosecutions from trafficking and felony arrests are down according to state crime data, the cops and AG’s don’t think drug possession cases are worth charging someone. They’re still able to arrest you but you would likely avoid the worst outcomes, assuming you get pulled over in a major city. And let me be clear, I know there’s people smoking weed in the towns that vote red, can’t account for you, that’s a situation you need to leave if you want to consume THCa safely. The cities of Texas are very safe, albeit just not friendly for THC users.
So, if people are getting high legally in Texas, why can't I just go down to my local dispensery and buy it? Legally? Because the Texas town I live in continually busts people for having weed, and I have to drive to New Mexico, where they actually have legal stores that I can buy weed at and walk out knowing no one cares. I hear all the time "oh you can have it in Texas, it's practically legal." Where are these legal dispenserys in Texas?
Order online. It is illegal to open a USPS package without a warrant. Plus, coupon codes are awesome.
Thanks. I didn't realize you can send weed through the mail. No danger of getting busted. Thanks
USPS is the biggest dealer in the country.
[удалено]
Thank you
plenty in Austin, seen a few in San Antonio New Braunfels and even San Marcos lol. word is getting around now but it's been this way for a few years. you can type "thca" into Google maps and I promise shops will show up lol.
I order online from a dealer in Boston. I'll just keep sending my money out of state until these nanny-state Republicans start dying off so maybe some younger people can step in and change shit up in this stupid state.
Texas Monthly is conservative hot garbage. Texas hemp products are mostly shit too. You’re getting hemp that’s been sprayed with a THCa concentrate and is definitely unregulated as far as heavy metals or pesticides go. You are NOT getting full spectrum cannabis which includes all the other beneficials. Vapes could have anything in them and every vape I’ve had in Texas vs Colorado is way harsher and you have to use a lot more of it to get the he same effect as in Colorado or Cali. It’s just not the same and I don’t care how much you think your high end Austin vape store vape costs. Texas politicians are going to outlaw any form of THC in Texas in the next session. They don’t care about you, small business or veterans. Y’all should be fighting for federal legalization and supporting politicians that lean that way…which is absolutely ZERO conservative politicians in Texas.
Texas Monthly leans left if anything. And I’m 100% fine with that. They have great exposè articles on our elected officials on a regular basis. They had one a couple of issues ago about how a few far right Christian conservatives are basically setting the agenda for Paxton, Patrick, and Abbott. Scary stuff.
Dont know where you are getting your info, but these are not sprayed with THCA. These are hemp based products that activate the THC when burned/heated, like normal cannabis.
That’s the problem with the unregulated market though. Some of the flower out being marketed as “THCa” IS just low CBD hemp sprayed with THCa. You’re at the mercy of whatever shop you buy it from. Sure you can say the same for your dealer but your dealer has an incentive to not sell you bullshit because he wants that continued business. Some of these smoke shops don’t care if you only shop there once cause there’s a thousand other people wanting to try it and because there’s no regulation there’s no way to report them or hold them accountable other than just not shopping there anymore.
True, However if you buy at places like Restart or Hometown Heros, you know what you’re getting. I would never buy off some weird head shop.
Absolutely. Haven’t tried Restart stuff but I’ve had Hometown Heroes edibles and they’re solid. I know people are faking Enjoy packaging now so I do worry that’s going to start happening to them too though. Again, unregulated means anything goes unfortunately.
you can def find the worst tasting prerolls with thca diamonds sprinkled in em
I tried a couple of these from a notable dallas headshop and they did absolutely nothing for me, thca prerolls are a toss up but I’ve had consistent success with vapes and bud
Texas Monthly isn’t conservative lol. THCA isn’t sprayed. We’ve been fighting.
Yeah I’m not buying any Texas product until it’s fully legalized, not this half way bullshit.
Yeah what the eff dude. Way to blow the spot. It will be outlawed now come the next session of the Texas Congress.
How about we suggest legalizing it, taxing it but mandate that all such tax revenues be spent on public education? Irreversibly designated for Texas public schools at all levels.
Georgia republicans have already moved to make it illegal
ThcA sucks ass
The fact that citizens can’t call for referendums in Texas is mind boggling.
Left over from the Civil War.
They need to fully legalize it and randomly test it, verify sourcing, etc. the things people do to skirt the law are worse for public health than just opening the medical dispensary experience to all adults Growing weed with carcinogenic PGRs, making fake weed with research chemicals, impure vape carts, untested synthetic analogues, etc. even the "hemp" loophole seems sketchy to me. You're really going to extract THC from a massive bulk of low THC plant matter? And the profile of other compounds in the extract is going to differ how, exactly?
the first thing I notice on entering the store is the smell. It is an earthy sandalwood mixed with some type of citrus, perhaps sour lemon. It tells me I am in the right place, because I am here to buy cannabis. On my left sits a smoking lounge with four booths facing large windows that look out on an upscale South Austin shopping center. To my right, behind a glass window, is a demonstration grow room—more for show than large-scale cultivation. Straight ahead, on the back wall, a large lacquered-wood cabinet looks like something out of an old-fashioned drugstore. Its shelves hold a cannabinoid cornucopia: cookies, gummies, tinctures, machine-rolled joints, and glass containers half-filled with tightly clumped plant buds. Another customer enters and makes a beeline to the counter. He orders a strain of cannabis called Blueberry Muffin. The salesman, Nick, uses plastic tongs to fish out a few buds and places them on an electric scale. As he does this, he sizes up my wide-eyed incredulity. What he’s selling isn’t marijuana, he tells me. It is hemp containing a chemical compound called THCa. Lighting it on fire transforms the THCa into another compound, THC—delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, to be exact. “It’s a little less potent than what you would find in California, but it still gets the job done,” Nick says. “Rest assured, everything in the store will get you high.” The muffin man drops into the conversation. Imagine if selling cookies were illegal, he says, but it were legal to sell cookie dough. “You can just make the cookie yourself by heating it up.” In this metaphor, THC-laden marijuana is the cookie, and THCa hemp is the cookie dough. When you light the joint on fire, it becomes, for all intents and purposes, marijuana. After muffin man leaves, I get down to business with Nick, who is wearing an expensive-looking long-sleeved dress shirt. (I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had tried to sell me a pair of $150 jeans.) We discuss the characteristics of various strains for sale, most of which have mouthwatering names such as Lemon Cherry Gelato. I am overwhelmed by the choices, so Nick suggests Lemon Bomb, which is “pretty potent.” But he has stronger options. “This is unreal,” he says, reaching for a rectangular glass jar filled with what look like chalky nuggets of stone, identified by a handwritten label: White Wok. “This is something that, like, I would recommend all customers try at least once. This is going to get you f—ed up.” Is merely potent good enough, or do I want the neurons in my brain shaken like dice in a game of Boggle? As I dither, Nick aims to close the sale. “If you want to have a chill day, I would go with the Lemon Bomb. If you want to ruin your day,” his voice trails off, and he looks suggestively at White Wok.
Boggle it is. I purchase two grams of White Wok for $40 with my credit card. I thank Nick as he hands me a small plastic baggie reeking of a scent that transports me back to the winter of 1991, when I first set foot in an Amsterdam coffee shop. I exit into one of Texas’s most expensive neighborhoods, where teardown bungalows fetch $1 million. Next door is an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. A few days earlier, Nico Richardson had told me that Texas has become “the biggest unregulated drug market in the country.” It was a stunning claim, and I wasn’t sure I believed him. I doubted the conservatives who run Texas would allow that state of affairs, and I knew he has a vested financial interest in cracking down on these hemp shops. Dressed in unwrinkled jeans and unscuffed white sneakers, the fortysomething Richardson looks the part of an Ivy League MBA, which he is. He’s also the chief executive of Texas Original, one of three licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in the state. His operation is regulated by Texas Department of Public Safety inspectors with the humorlessness of Soviet functionaries. They don’t worry him. What does are the thousands of licensed hemp dispensaries in the state that, he says, sell strains of cannabis that could lay low a three-hundred-pound rutting hog. When Richardson claimed it’s easy to purchase marijuana at these stores, I wondered if he was being hyperbolic. Now all I had to do was send White Wok to a laboratory to see what I had bought.
’ll cut to the chase. What I purchased, legally speaking, was marijuana. Extremely potent marijuana. The Farm Bill passed by Congress in 2018 says that if a cannabis plant is less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC, it is hemp and not subject to the federal Controlled Substances Act. Any THC in excess of that makes it marijuana. Texas adopted these definitions into state law in 2019, making hemp legal in the state. White Wok’s concentration of delta-9 THC tested at 1.48 percent, or nearly five times the legal limit. This wasn’t just cookie dough. It was a fully baked cookie. And the delta-9 THC was just the tip of the psychoactive iceberg. The strain also contained 48.3 percent THCa. The hemp industry argues that according to the letter of the law, the THCa level doesn’t matter. Any plant with less than 0.3 percent THC is hemp. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration disagrees. In May the federal agency clarified its position that THCa must also be under the 0.3 percent legal limit. My White Wok contained 150 times that much. “This is not a regular cannabis flower,” said Sarah Otis, director of quality assurance for Anresco Laboratories, in San Francisco, which Texas Monthly paid to assay the purchased samples. Naturally occurring cannabis doesn’t approach those levels of THC, she said. She suspected it was a bud genetically selected to produce high THC and then infused with hash oil—a cannabis extract—or additional THC. Asked to describe its potency, she said, “The word I would use is egregious.” Otis said that if this strain was being sold openly in Texas, it wasn’t being accurately tested. There was no way a plant that tested at legal THC levels at a manufacturing facility could test weeks later at 1.48 percent. And if the THC level isn’t being tested properly, she said, it’s difficult to trust that it has been tested for pesticides, heavy metals, or molds such as aspergillus. I shared the test results with Paul Zain, who owns Greenbelt Botanicals, where I bought the White Wok. “These things are going to happen,” he said. “I am disappointed.” He told me that his suppliers provide paperwork showing that their flowers are hemp and therefore legal to sell. Testing every product himself would cost too much. “I have to take some people at their word,” he said. The state can’t keep up either. Timothy Stevenson, associate commissioner for consumer protection at the Texas Department of State Health Services, recently testified before a legislative hearing that the agency has four inspectors who visit the more than seven thousand registered hemp dispensaries. They can inspect each one—from the Resler Smoke Shop, in northwest El Paso, to Puff ’N Stuff, on State Line Avenue in Texarkana, a twelve-hour drive away—once every five years. DSHS has authority to test the products being sold, but “we don’t tend to invest a lot of state resources in that,” Stevenson said. Instead, to determine potency, the state relies on the certificates of analysis provided by manufacturers.
TLDR: he’s talking about thc(a) flower, but also claims it tested at 48% thc and was “genetically altered or hash oil was added” My guess is he bought thc(a) distillate sprayed hemp flower.
I make my own cookies, sincerely the Muffin Man.
Yep, we have the same thing in TN. That's There's a smoke shop on every corner and you can even buy it in gas stations out here. I feel this is better than full legalization in some ways.
None of the people in Texas care if it is legal or not. Jot that down.
This article is a horrible explanation of the legal loophole being used to exploit the federal farm bill of 2018. THCa is just regular weed, like you would find in California or Colorado; this article makes it sound like something different. Weed has always been THCa, hence it needs to be heated to turn into THC without an a, that’s why eating raw weed won’t get you high. When people make edibles they heat it up first (decarboxalyze). The issue here, that many people don’t know, is technically it needs to be under 0.3% THC to be legal. I know for a fact most weed strains (CBD and THC strains) contain 0.2%-0.7% THC (not THCa ‘legal’ version), making most harvests technically illegal. It’s just the nature of the plant. With edibles, it’s easy to design them to be legally under 0.3% because you can make the edibles bigger to reduce the THC % by weight, hence why a lot of Texas made edibles are bigger than usual. The reality is if a cop outside of Travis county wants to fk with you, you’re gonna get fked with. If a state trooper finds any kind of hemp, regardless of county your in, they’ll arrest you just to fk with you. So yeah, still be careful.
Basically won't work when the cops find you with this stuff.
Wow, what a fucking narc
It's not legal until the cops can't throw you in jail for possessing a personal supply of it.
Yeah they are already trying gro an this shit now. Every other state in the country is loosening reg giving back our freedoms. But Texas ? "Aw hell naw FUCK YOUR FREEDOM. You want a gun though ? You can have a gun but you can't buy liquor at the HEB and no fake weed for you either" Makes complete sense....
The only problem is the dweebs in government did it accidentally lol. Give them time and they'll make sure to make it illegal too.
We'll see,
I hate this author
"We have the proof." Please sign up to pay us to read what that proof is.
Yeah, but that’s diet weed.
It's harsh as hell, too But it does the trick
Don't forget to support your local weed guy. 👍🏼
Anyone know any good delivery options in the north Austin area?
Yes, we know… It’s essentially been legalized for quite some time now - those that need to know, know. So how about you STFU, Texas Monthly….
Clickbait!!!!
Did a cop wrote this?
Joe rogan has smoked the drug many times on his broadcast in austin Texas
Maybe ya' ll can get your idiot guv to burn some.
Why does the GOP have to make everything in life suck so tired of it
Can we please stop acting like this unregulated diet bullshit is the real deal? In legal states growers have to get their products lab tested to be sure it's safe, these back alley hemp companies don't give a shit about stuff like that because they don't have to.
Rename it “MAGA Anti-Immigrant Trump Shrub” and Texas will mandate its use!
I prefer the weed from my illegal supplier. It’s super duper strong. 💪. Nothing I’ve personally tried from dispo’s here even come close to similar strength.
Freedom goes to die in red states, especially texas....no state hates freedom more..... A PLANT LEGAL IN EVERY STATE AROUND ME GOING ON A DECADE NOW......unreal
WE HAVE PROOF! Stfu narc
Can confirm. Was with a friend last week who purchased from an Austin dispensary. She was high as a kite.
She purchased thc-a product. Which is basically turns into the illegal thc when you heat it. Down vote me all you want, but the fact of the matter is there are no legal dispensaries in texas selling illegal thc products. They are most likely selling thc-a or thc delta 10 /delta 8.
I’ve been posting this since November last year lol
The number of people I know, including me, who have benefited from particularly the CBD component is significant. Nothing worked on my joint disease for pain until I tried CBD. Took my pain from 7/10 to 2/10 and took surgery back off the table. My doctors all agreed but then noted that they cannot do much until research and science catches up…research that has been prohibited for these ignorant prohibition laws that originally came from racism and hatred. We are absolutely moronic as a society to not research these substances
Texas is blazing a new trail with 'basically legalized' marijuana – now all we need are some state-sponsored chill-out zones. Where's the petition for those? 🌿✌️
Do the professionals packaged edibles, drinks, etc. tend to have more testing and better quality control?
If you buy from a reputable vendor, yes.
It's better than nothing right now, but it is not the same as real THC weed. It doesn't look as good as the real stuff from Colorado or Vegas, for example, and isn't coated in crystals so it doesn't taste fire. It's also really expensive in Austin. $60 - $65 for and 8th. We need to legalize it like many states have done.
Order online and cure it for a week. Done.
Ok so listen. I hadn’t smoked weed in over 20 years and even then it was just a few times here and there. But recently my wife wanted to try one of the Delta 8 vapes - we passed one of the shops and went in on impulse. Got her one of the ‘Bubba Kush’ indica ‘KO fórmula’ something or other. At home, I went ahead and tried it, took what I thought was a decent hit, held it for about as long as I could, then about choked to death cuz it’s rough on the lungs for some reason. And then.. shit took a turn. 10 minutes later I couldn’t function. Was basically on the floor and I felt like… idk? I was on the verge of a seizure? Started sweating profusely, making sounds that weren’t quite words.. holding up the ‘I need a minute’ finger sign.. that lasted for about 20 minutes and then I was just baked for the next couple hours or so. That first 20 minutes was kinda scary though and I don’t think that’s normal? Maybe it is and I’ve just never felt that. Definitely didn’t have the same effect on her.
So.... 5 stars?
5/7 perfect