Delta-8 Is Still In Legal In Texas For Now After Judge’s Ruling

While the rest of the country is throwing in the towel on the fight against all things marijuana related, The State of Texas continues to put up a fight despite the overwhelming majority of its constituents who want to see the drug legalized.

Since the state passed House Bill 1325 in 2019, which technically legalized most hemp and CBD products, CBD stores across the state began selling delta-8 which is a cannabis extract, under the assumption that the passage of a federal farm bill in 2018 and the 2019 state law had legalized the sale of the substance.

The problem is, Delta-8, unlike other CBD products, gets you high, and that is where the State takes issue with its sale.

The federal farm bill changed the definition of “lawful marijuana extracts” to include any extract that has lower than 0.3% of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in marijuana. Delta-8 falls into this category, so on Oct. 15, The Texas Department of State Health Services issued an online order classifying delta-8 as a Schedule I drug, rendering it illegal.

Hometown Hero, a CBD dispensary based in Austin, filed the request with State district court Judge Jan Soifer.

According to The Texas Tribune, The company argued an injunction was needed because the DSHS didn't adequately notify retailers of the change. The Travis County based judge agreed citing that the action from DSHS didn’t comply with the state’s rule-making requirements.

The state is expected to appeal the ruling so this is far from over.

DSHS claims that a notice in the Texas Register, a public hearing in which nobody came to speak and a DSHS official giving legislative testimony in May, were ample notice that delta-8 would be illegal before it published the online notice. The state also argues that that because the state hemp law did not explicitly discuss delta-8 at all, it “did not, nor was it intended to, allow for the manufacture and sale” of delta-8 products.

You know how you can end all of this back and forth right? JUST LEGALIZE THE DAMN WEED ALREADY.