Texas Senate Passes Bill To Ban Cities From Putting Marijuana Decriminalization Initiatives On Local Ballots
What is going down in the great state of Texas? A state already at odds with the hemp industry has now set its targets squarely on cannabis.
Per Marijuana Moment
The Texas Senate has approved a bill that would prohibit cities from putting any citizen initiative on local ballots that would decriminalize marijuana or other controlled substances—as several localities have already done despite lawsuits from the state attorney general.
The legislation from Sen. Charles Perry (R) is responsive to those local reforms, and it passed the chamber on Wednesday in a 23-8 vote. It now heads to the House of Representatives.
Under the proposal, state law would be amended to say that local entities “may not place an item on a ballot, including a municipal charter or charter amendment, that would provide that the local entity will not fully enforce” state drug laws.
The Texas Senate has approved a bill that would prohibit cities from putting any citizen initiative on local ballots that would decriminalize marijuana or other controlled substances—as several localities have already done despite lawsuits from the state attorney general.
The legislation from Sen. Charles Perry (R) is responsive to those local reforms, and it passed the chamber on Wednesday in a 23-8 vote. It now heads to the House of Representatives.
The latest version of the legislation as amended in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee would also specifically bar localities from putting initiatives on the ballot that would contravene the state’s consumable hemp laws.
It would also require the attorney general to create a form for people to report violations of the law. And it’d expedite legal proceedings to challenge any city, mandating that an appellate court “render its final order or judgment with the least possible delay,” a legislative analysis says.
It’s not clear why, if the attorney general’s lawsuits assert that local decriminalization laws are already prohibited under statute, the proposed amendments to the code are necessary. But the legislation does appear to escalate enforcement and penalties.
