Texas Is Trying To Ban THC Again

Yesterday, the Texas Senate spent seven and a half hours discussing “the societal impacts of THC” at an invite-only interim Senate hearing. No one who supports or benefits from hemp was invited.

The invite list was the same cartoonish cast of characters who spoke out against hemp during every SB3 hearing last year: Steve Dye, police chief of Allen, Texas (not South Park, CO, as you might assume); Aubree Adams, an anti-marijuana activist from Colorado who’s flown in for every hearing; a handful of “doctors” who give off North Korean propaganda vibes; Chair Lois Kolkhorst, who I wasn’t familiar with but who fit right in; and Senator Charles Perry, Dan Patrick’s BFF and fearless leader of the THC prohibitionists.

No hemp farmers. No small business owners. No veterans or civilians who use and benefit from hemp products.

Obviously, we weren’t invited, but I downloaded the seven-and-a-half-hour livestream and cut up highlights. I’ll be posting clips on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

I also sifted through hundreds of verified reviews from Chill Country customers who tell us, in their own words, exactly what this plant does for them. Here’s what we, and our customers, would have said had we been invited to testify.

“There’s nothing good from this stuff. There’s no virtue in it.”

That’s Senator Charles Perry, the man who brought you SB3-5 and nearly wiped out the entire Texas hemp industry last year. No virtue. Nothing good.

Here’s Diane, a military veteran and verified Chill Country customer:

“I am a retired military veteran. I have suffered from anxiety and PTSD for years. Unfortunately, antidepressants, though they work, take a toll on the body and mind. These gummies have enabled me to discontinue the use of antidepressants after 16 years.”

Sixteen years of pharmaceuticals, replaced by a plant. A veteran the state of Texas claims to love, telling you that hemp-derived THC is the thing that let her wean off the real drugs.

Here’s Carlos:

“It also helps with my pain and I’m not taking as many pain pills thanks to you guys.”

Here’s Robin:

“I have had chronic pain for years. I do not take pain pills anymore.”

Here’s Vicki:

“I have not slept in years. I hurt my hip and the pain made me unable to sleep at all. I can’t take traditional medicine for pain or sleep. I take one gummy before bed and sleep like a rock with much less pain. There is no grogginess.”

Sleep is the single most common thing our customers write to us about, hundreds of them, and it’s the kind of inconvenient, life-improving story that never gets an invitation to a Senate hearing.

The committee spent the morning worried about ballooning health care costs. These are people getting off antidepressants, blood pressure medication, and opioids so they can sleep through the night without becoming pharma-induced zombies. Nobody at that table wanted to hear it, because “no virtue in it” is a lot harder to say when Diane, Carlos, Robin, and Vicki are allowed to testify.

“THC is a weapon of mass destruction causing chemical injuries to the brain and the body.”

A direct quote from Aubree Adams of Pueblo, Colorado. She also testified that THC “has the highest transition rate to schizophrenia among all drugs, including meth.”

Hilariously, the numbers presented in the same hearing tell the truth. The state’s own witness, Dr. Amanda Hall from the Department of State Health Services, put the actual data on the screen. THC was 0.002% of Texas EMS calls. Cannabis-related EMS responses have decreased since 2020, two years after hemp-derived THC was legalized. There were nineteen THC-related deaths in the entire state over five years.

Nineteen. Alcohol kills more Texans than that before lunch. And it’s worth noting those nineteen deaths are “THC-related.” There are still zero recorded deaths in all of human history linked directly to THC consumption.

“This is an industry built on getting you wasted. Let’s be clear.”

Let’s be clear, then.

Here’s Gina:

“The hybrid gummies have completely replaced alcohol for me. Parties, concerts, holiday gatherings, anywhere I would have had a cocktail or glass of wine, I now do one to one and a half 8mg gummies, and have the best time drinking nothing but water.”

Gina isn’t getting wasted. She traded a bottle of wine for a moderate dose of THC and a clear head the next morning. Perry himself admitted during the hearing that the alcohol industry says its sales are “way down” because consumers are choosing products like Chill Country. Here’s the direct quote:

“You know, the interesting dynamic is, and I don’t know how to read this, but the alcohol industry has said that their sales are way down because this industry is taking their market share away. So I don’t know how to read that, but that’s kinda where it’s big industry, and it’s gotten a big foothold illegally.”

Perry made many claims that our industry, and companies like ours, are untrustworthy. Here’s another direct quote from the hearing:

“this industry is known for false narratives. Everything they speak to is pretty much untrue. So I’m just telling you everything you hear is probably not true.”

Here’s Amanda, who chose Chill Country because of our trustworthy reputation:

“The dosing accuracy and quality standards here are exactly what sold me.”

Our customers came to us because we test, we label, and we tell the truth about what’s in the bag. Every legitimate operator in the hemp industry is already doing the things regulators pretend they want.

The part where they stopped pretending it was about health

“The cost of doing business is gonna get so high that most of them will go out of business, I hope.” –Senator Charles Perry

That’s a sitting senator saying the goal is to price legal Texas businesses out of existence. A few minutes earlier, he said he hoped the next legislature would “fill up our jail cells.”

“I hope the legislature gonna be very aggressive making sure we fill up our jail cells and the problems that it’s created with the people that are distributing this stuff.”

Then, when Perry described the state’s medical marijuana program, TCUP, the exact same THC molecule became medicine, as long as it’s “administered by a physician that has your best interest at heart.”

Here is a screenshot from the website of the TCUP company who controls 70%+ of the medical marijuana market in Texas. Apparently, the “physicians” Perry is referring to work at texas420doctors.com.

In addition to collecting referral fees from TCUP “patients,” texas420docotrs.com also promotes and sells hemp products directly on the same site. What a business model.

So it was never the molecule and it was never about public safety. They say it’s poison from us, but it’s medicine from texas420doctor.com and TCUP license holders. The only difference is who gets to sell it and who gets to profit.

If you want to support the Texas hemp industry and Texan’s rights to use a God-given plant, the Texas Hemp Business Council is the group fighting this in court and at the Capitol. Throw them a donation and read their website to find out how you can support their efforts.

Disclaimer: The customer reviews quoted here are individual, unedited experiences shared with our company, not medical claims or medical advice. Chill Country products are legal hemp-derived products and are not evaluated by the FDA or intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. All Chill Country products are for adults 21+ only.

• Category: Current Events, Hemp Laws, Nature Is Medicine