The debrief from the Texas State Republican Convention
continues. Today we’re finally getting to the platform, which is where I spent
my many hours. In fact, I was still doing final edits late this past Wednesday
night. The final version was published online Thursday—almost immediately after
which I noticed a missing period. Sigh.
Anyway, the ideas and discussions surrounding the platform
are what is interesting.
I’ll be covering some of the bigger issues—at least the ones
that got my attention and seemed to have a lot of public interest—in four
parts. Today we’ll look at cannabis. (Yes, this is the Republican Party. Have
patience and read on.) Then we’ll handle these other issues, in three subsequent posts (all this
week):
Cannabis
I manned the computer in the Health and Human Services Subcommittee,
which took testimony for an hour and a half—plus as issues came up during all
of Monday afternoon and evening. Still, one testifier took the subcommittee to
task for not being willing to take enough testimony. You can’t win. But it was,
indeed, a lot of public testimony.
One of the issues that took a great deal of time was medical
marijuana. It wasn’t really about what you think, and it didn’t go the way I
would have expected. I learned a lot. The first to testify was to warn against the
slippery slope, and included a handout of information related to the dangers of
marijuana. That was kind of what I expected, and accurate as far as
recreational use goes.
But there was a plank in the 2016 platform that said this:
Compassionate Use Act: We call upon the Texas
Legislature to improve the 2015 Compassionate Use Act to allow doctors to
determine the appropriate use of cannabis to prescribed patients.
Most of the testimony urged keeping this plank, with a
couple of minor changes. “Prescribed patients,” they said, was an inaccurate
description of what they do.
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| cannabis, image from here |
There are currently a very few, strictly limited uses of
extracted oils. I can’t reproduce the testimony accurately. But there are
non-psychotropic oils, such as cannabidiol, I believe, that have uses for
certain intractable epilepsy. Some people believe it should be up to doctors to
determine whether that use should be broadened to a wider range of epilepsy
patients.
And there was touching testimony related to psychotropic oil
THC (tetrahydrocannbinol) derived from cannabis that has offered remarkable
help, legally, to certain types of autism and other mental illnesses—already
treated unsuccessfully by other psychotropic drugs.
One problem is that cannabis (marijuana) is classified as a
Schedule 1 drug, which means it is declared to have no possible positive uses.
That means it’s always illegal, and even doing research is difficult or
illegal. I don’t fully understand this, because oils such as marinol (synthetic
THC) have been known, and used, for several decades. And uses continue to be
found. So research is being done somewhere. But maybe not in Texas. The
schedule classification is a federal responsibility. Yet pressure from states,
along with testimony such as we heard, can bring about change there.
Anyway, our non-binding platform ended up containing two
planks related to use of cannabis for medical and research purposes. No one
testified in favor of its recreational use. Here are the two planks:
Compassionate Use Act: We call upon the Texas Legislature to
improve the 2015 Compassionate Use Act to allow doctors to determine the
appropriate use of cannabis to certified patients.
Cannabis Classification: Congress should remove cannabis from the
list of Schedule 1 and move to Schedule 2.
In the Criminal and Civil Justice Subcommittee, and then in
final discussions involving the whole committee, there was debate about possession
of small amounts of cannabis, with the plank finally making it a civil offense
with a fine, rather than a criminal offense, to possess one ounce or less.
Civil Penalty: We support a change in the law to make it a
civil, and not a criminal, offense for legal adults only to possess one ounce
or less of marijuana for personal use, punishable by a fine of up to $100, but
without jail time.
I disagreed with this plank. The argument is that you
shouldn’t be filling up prisons with nonviolent offenders, such as minor drug
users. But this is not the case. The data presented included all nonviolent offenders—grand theft
auto, embezzlement, drunk driving, etc., and lumping in minor drug offenses in
with them to make it seem like we’re wasting our time on unnecessary
prosecutions. But this is disingenuous.
The Harris County DA, Democrat Kim Ogg, got voted in with
this at the top of her agenda. It has been wreaking havoc. It’s very rare to
have a first time offender jailed. But this policy takes away bargaining power
from prosecutors on subsequent offenses. Also, you would put police in a bad
position, trying to guess whether the amount possessed is 1.1 ounces, rather
than .99 ounces—because, if they’re wrong, they open up the police department
to false arrest lawsuits.
The plank-by-plank voting had 1431 votes against, about 19%,
which was higher disapproval than all but a few other planks.
It’s good that the platform is just a beginning point.
Legislation has to follow, and that is another opportunity for testimony and
debate. So maybe we can prevent movement in this unfortunate direction.
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