Texas Military Veterans Say Potential Ban On Hemp-Derived THC Could Drive Them Back To Opioids Or The Illicit Marijuana Market

*“The doctor assured me he could prescribe me enough… I said, ‘Sure, you
can, but I can’t afford it.’”*

*By Hayden Betts and Stephen Simpson, The Texas Tribune*

Wesley Barnes, 55, a Gulf War veteran, has battled chronic pain and PTSD
since his exposure to sarin gas overseas. After leaving the Army in 1994,
he spent years dependent on prescribed opiates.

“There’s really nothing at the VA to help with pain or anxiety that isn’t
addictive,” said Barnes from his home in Onalaska, about 30 miles east of
Huntsville. “I was a zombie on a couch.”

Barnes qualified for Texas’s medical marijuana program, also called the
Compassionate Use Program, shortly after its expansion in 2021. He paid
$600 in doctor’s visits to sign up, and he paid another $600 to $800 a
month to buy legal medical cannabis.

“The doctor assured me he could prescribe me enough,” Barnes recalled. “I
said, ‘Sure, you can, but I can’t afford it.’”

Barnes briefly turned to purchasing cannabis illegally before discovering
he could treat his pain with legal hemp products. He could buy for $40 what
cost him $220 on the street.

“Don’t make me go back to the black market,” Barnes said.

Now, as Texas looks to ban hemp products while expanding the state’s
medical marijuana program, some chronic pain patients like Barnes say they
do not plan to participate in the Compassionate Use Program even if retail
THC products become illegal. Their concerns center on the high cost, dosing
inflexibility and civil rights issues raised by the legal alternative.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) veto is the last remaining hurdle for a bill that
would ban all products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, likely spelling
the end for the state’s short-lived hemp industry.

Senate Bill 3, which prohibits the possession of consumable hemp products
that contain any synthetic cannabinoid, often known as delta-8, was a
priority this legislative session for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who often
denounced the effects of the drug on children. Patrick did not respond to
The Texas Tribune’s requests for a comment.

Hemp users, retailers, growers and some Republicans have been urging Abbott
to axe the bill. Asked whether Abbott would veto SB 3 by the June 22
deadline, his press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said the governor is still
reviewing all pending legislation.

As a concession of sorts to veterans and THC users with chronic conditions, House
Bill 46 also passed this legislative session, expanding the types of
products, number of dispensaries and qualifying health conditions for the
medical marijuana program, as well as reducing some of the costly
regulations on dispensaries.

Jervonne Singletary, a spokesperson for Austin medical marijuana company
Goodblend, said the new rules should translate into lower prices for
customers.

“With any limited program at the start, it’s expensive, and then when it
slowly expands overtime, and more locations come online, and more operators
come online, more cultivation spaces come online, then naturally the prices
of the medicine come down,” she said.

*Accessibility of hemp-derived THC*

William Macbrohn, a 57-year-old Air Force veteran living in San Antonio,
worked as a warehouse manager at Habitat for Humanity until psoriatic
arthritis prevented him from doing his job.

“I’m in pain 24/7. On a good day, I’m at a five or a six. I mow the lawn
and I’m done for two days,” Macbrohn said.

Macbrohn only uses consumable hemp products at night to help ease his pain
enough to fall asleep. He found them after years of searching for a product
that he believed was neither physically addictive nor had unpredictable
mental effects like Ambien.

“Finally, all this time that I’ve been suffering, I found something that’ll
help that’s not a synthetic chemical…and they’re going to go and take it
away,” he said.

Macbrohn qualifies for the state’s Compassionate Use Program but has
avoided signing up for it because he regularly carries a concealed gun. He
believes carrying a weapon and having a medical marijuana card would be
illegal under federal law, though not Texas law. “I don’t want to take that
chance,” said Macbrohn, who believes concealed-carrying and using
consumable hemp while it’s still legal is permissible.

The issue of the federal legality of both using state-level legal marijuana
and owning a gun remains a gray area nationwide. The 2021 case of an El
Paso woman convicted of federal crimes for both owning firearms and
illegally possessing marijuana was overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals in January as “inconsistent with our history and tradition of
firearms regulations.” However, the U.S. Department of Justice has appealed
cases with similar facts to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the
issue broadly.

Macbrohn’s commitment to abiding by the law extends to the potential hemp
ban. Possessing consumable hemp products under the bill would be an expungeable
Class C misdemeanor punishable with a fine up to $500 and no jail time.

“If they ban it, then I guess I’m done,” he said.

For the time being, Macbrohn is stockpiling consumable hemp products.

Donna Maniscalco, a 62-year-old Navy veteran living in Lometa, served
nearly 19 years as a chaplain’s assistant before being discharged for
medical reasons in 2009. Stationed for a time in Keflavik, Iceland, where
she was repeatedly “picked up by the wind and just literally thrown,” she
developed spinal injuries that surgeons have declined to operate on.

Maniscalco says that consumable hemp products allow her to maintain a
normal lifestyle and to garden, which helps her mental health. Without
them, she’d “probably be in bed all day.”

Maniscalco, like Macbrohn, is also concerned that putting her name on a
list could infringe on her right to carry a firearm.

Maniscalco said that if the ban goes into effect she may move in with her
parents who live in upstate New York where cannabis and consumable hemp
products are widely legal and available.

“I don’t want to go,” she said, “I have friends here. I have two sons and a
daughter here. I love the long growing season. I love Texas.”

Barnes said among the allures of hemp products is that they come in
different strains that create an ultra-personalized treatment option.
Meanwhile, with the medical marijuana program, doctors are prohibited from
prescribing cannabis doses higher than 10 milligrams at a time, forcing
“the price higher for someone who has more pain,” Barnes said.

*Can medical marijuana expand quickly enough?*

HB 46 expands the state’s medical marijuana program by including more
popular products such as prescribed inhalers and vaping devices and adding
nine dispensers to bring the total to 12. It also adds traumatic brain
injuries, chronic pain, Crohn’s disease and terminal illnesses to the list
of qualifying conditions.

But the bill’s biggest change that could lower prices for consumers will be
allowing medical marijuana distributors to store their products in various
satellite locations instead of having to drive across the state to return
the product to the original dispensary every day.

This has made products more expensive and limited where the medical
marijuana program can reach.

Singletary said prices should decline now that medical marijuana companies
can stock products overnight in designated locations.

But, she clarified she doesn’t expect medical marijuana to be as accessible
as hemp immediately. More than 8,000 retailers in Texas now sell
hemp-derived THC products. Before starting the expansion process, the
medical marijuana industry will need a few months after the law goes into
effect on September 1 to clarify some of the technical details of the new
legislation, Singletary said.

“Hemp exploded overnight,” she said, “but we are going to have measured
growth.”

While hemp might become illegal in Texas, it still will be federally legal,
meaning mail-order hemp products will still be an option for some, but
Singletary said she doesn’t feel the need to compete with this industry.

“There are millions of Texans who want quality, regulated products in the
state and don’t want to trust mail-order hemp, so the folks who feel like
that is the option for them, I respect their decision, I truly do, but
those who want doctor prescribed cannabis that’s produced in the state that
is regulated, tested, and validated, then come to our program,” she said.

*Regulation versus a ban*

Since the wave of recreational marijuana legalization began with Colorado
and Washington in 2012, large scale studies have repeatedly found that
marijuana use in general increases when cannabis is legal. Other studies
have shown that use decreases when cannabis becomes criminalized,
suggesting Texas will likely follow a similar path despite some users
saying they plan on circumventing the THC ban.

For more than a century, government officials and public health experts
have debated the efficacy of cannabis prohibition in achieving a variety of
aims.

Civil rights attorneys argue that drug criminalization comes with a civil
liberties cost. A 2020 ACLU report found that “more than six million
[marijuana related] arrests occurred between 2010 and 2018” and that “Black
people are 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for
marijuana possession, notwithstanding comparable usage rates.”

Kirsten Budwine, a policy attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said,
“This is not just bad policy, but a step backward into the failed logic of
the war on drugs… What it really does is turn a regulatory issue into a
criminal one.”

Decades of studies affirm the utility of cannabinoids in treating chronic
pain. A 2017 review of over 10,000 studies found “substantial evidence”
that cannabinoids are good for treating chronic pain and “moderate
evidence” that extensive cannabinoid use impairs memory and attention.

Medical experts agree that incidences of cannabis-induced psychosis like
the ones Patrick has referenced in press conferences, do occur, especially
when exposing high-THC products to a broad population without safeguards.

Last year, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine
responded to growing concerns about the expansion of cannabis use in the
country by calling for unregulated hemp-derived products to be “regulated
in the same manner as other intoxicating cannabis products” at the federal
level. The report also called for public education campaigns about the
risks of cannabis and for states to prevent underaged people from buying
the drug, rather than outright policy bans of THC products or the
criminalization of cannabis possession.

Users and the hemp industry had told Texas lawmakers that they would
welcome regulations to the hemp industry to address those concerns, rather
than a complete ban.

Barnes fears that the new era of illegal hemp could create even more
dangers than before.

“Do they want me to have to go back to some guy on the street corner and
hope it doesn’t have fentanyl in it? Or get shot for 200 bucks or
whatever?” he said.

*This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/17/texas-thc-hemp-medical-marijuana-ban-veterans-pain/.*

*The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing
and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at
texastribune.org.*

Texas Governor Still Won’t Say If He’ll Sign Hemp Ban Bill, But Thinks
There Are ‘Meaningful’ Concerns On Both Sides Of The Debate

*Photo courtesy of Kimzy Nanney.*

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Could Drive Them Back To Opioids Or The Illicit Marijuana Market appeared
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