Lawmakers should consult forensic scientists before passing any more Marijuana laws
Texas legalized hemp and embraced CBD. Crime labs are struggling.
Since Texas legalized hemp in 2019, enforcement of the state’s marijuana laws has become confusing and chaotic.
Unfortunately, Texas crime labs have been caught in the middle as they are forced to analyze an increasing variety of potential evidence. “Is it pot?” isn’t the simple question it once was.
Anyone near a strip mall can figure out why. Cannabidiol, or CBD, products are everywhere. You can get CBD-infused sports bras or socks these days. Or hemp-derived gummies. Or a seemingly infinite array of flavored vape cartridges.
Whether those contain illegal amounts of the compound tetrahydrocannabinol is the question crime labs are having to sort out. THC is the psychoactive chemical that, in concentrations of more than 0.03%, is illegal in Texas.
Testing procedures have not kept up with the bloom of hemp and CBD products and substances. That’s why the Texas Legislature should not move forward with any new restrictions on the use of hemp and CBD-infused products without the close involvement of state crime lab representatives.
Their input is vital before any new restrictions are even considered.
“I hate hemp,” Peter Stout, president of the Texas Association of Crime Lab Directors, told the Texas agency that regulates forensic science at its meeting last month.
Stout, who was giving a legislative update to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, was referring to the difficulty crime labs have faced since Texas mirrored the 2018 federal farm bill, which legalized hemp.
Meant to boost the agricultural industry, hemp legalization in Texas spurred a boon in products largely marketed for their health and relaxation benefits. In addition to hemp vape oils, the products include candy, cookies, breakfast cereal, gummies and more. CBD is infused in clothes, lotions, beverages, even pet products. Whether any of this stuff actually works, consumers can decide.
But it is impossible to tell a legal CBD gummy from an illegal psychoactive gummy without testing. Lawmakers are especially worried about the use of synthetically enhanced THC products and want enhanced testing requirements.
But Stout told us that accurate testing for edibles and other hemp and CBD-infused items is still being developed. While testing of vape oil is available, e-cigarettes and cartridges are often difficult for analysts to access.
“These devices are wildly variable and come in all shapes and sizes,” he said. Analysts have to be careful not to break the devices and cleanly access the reservoir of liquid — a time-consuming process.
The days when forensic analysts just ran a quick test on a bag of green plants to determine if it was marijuana are behind us. With the proliferation of products containing some amount of cannabis, lawmakers want to control these products.
But legal control means establishing clear evidence. And that means relying on crime labs to test, test, test. The state is already asking a lot of overworked crime labs. Submitting vape cartridges and gummies to greater analysis is adding sometimes impossible tasks to the workload.
Getting aligned with federal law on hemp was the right thing to do. But keeping up with the consequences is going to require a strategy that doesn’t boil down to testing everything.
