{"id":417374,"date":"2026-08-26T16:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/417374\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T16:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:08:08","slug":"thc-legal-efforts-in-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/417374\/","title":{"rendered":"THC legal efforts in Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEXAS \u2014\u00a0A city charter focused on THC enforcement is heading to the November ballot for Houston voters. The charter<\/a>, called the Houston Freedom Act, calls for the city\u2019s police department to make THC enforcement a low priority in its operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just saying that this is the lowest priority of HPD,\u201d said Catina Voellinger, the executive director of Ground Game Texas. \u201cIn addition to that, we\u2019re also asking the city to do an audit over the past five years on these types of arrests and then also break down the demographics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ground Game Texas is a progressive advocacy and civic engagement group that has worked on passing local ordinances in Texas cities, including those on cannabis.<\/p>\n

Voellinger explains her organization was a part of the effort to pass cannabis decriminalization propositions in several Texas cities, like Killeen and San Marcos in 2022, Dallas in 2023 and Bastrop in 2024.<\/p>\n

She began the work on cannabis decriminalization in the capital city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was in 2021,\u201d she said. \u201cThe policy was already implemented here at the city level; we just wanted to codify it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voellinger was successful in passing the propositions across the state over the years, but a lawsuit\u00a0<\/a>from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2024 repealed the propositions.<\/p>\n

Because of the previous legal action, Voellinger hopes a “de-prioritization” effort will be able to stick.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just adapting the policy in what we believe is our legal right for local government to be able to instruct their local police on what they can and can\u2019t do,\u201d Voellinger said.<\/p>\n

The Houston Freedom Act lays out the call for officers to keep marijuana possessions at their lowest level of concern when it comes to arrests, along with a no-knock warrant ban and the data collection of arrests. However, the policy only touches on marijuana misdemeanor charges.<\/p>\n

The Texas Department of State Health Services, after a May 1 Texas Supreme Court ruling, put several THC compounds, including delta-8 THC, under Schedule I of the Texas controlled substances list, which can result in a felony. The change went into effect on July 31.<\/p>\n

The Houston Freedom Act does not specifically touch on the new legal consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one thing about the law; sometimes it moves really, really slow,\u201d Voellinger said, \u201cand then sometimes it moves really, really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole ping-ponging back and forth,\u201d she continued, touching on the multiple lawsuits that tackle the legality of THC in Texas, \u201cwe haven\u2019t been able to craft any policy that can be implemented on the local level because of the ping-pong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Harris County District Attorney\u2019s office also touched on the back-and-forth surrounding Texas THC. Spectrum News reached out to the office for comment on whether District Attorney Sean Teare would pursue the de-prioritization effort.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the office, Damali Keith, responded to the inquiry, saying \u201cWe follow the law and as we do so we ensure that we focus limited enforcement resources on prosecuting the most violent offenders and serious drug-related crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, saying, \u201cThis includes organized crime and drug-trafficking. As we do so, we also run a very robust marijuana diversion program<\/a> that continues to be in effect that covers marijuana possession cases. Changes in state law have led to confusion among residents and law enforcement agencies and we continue to urge the state legislature to take action to clarify these laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Austin Police Department (APD) is actively taking a similar approach to the Harris County district attorney.<\/p>\n

Sgt. Steve Hawkins from APD\u2019s narcotics support unit says his team will follow state law, but they have bigger agenda items when it comes to safety in the capital city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s potential for felony charges to be filed on a person if they\u2019re in possession of delta-8. Is that our priority? No, it\u2019s not,\u201d Hawkins said. \u201cWe have other bigger problems with narcotics in the city that my team tends to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the lack of coverage on the felony charges in the Houston Freedom Act, Voellinger hopes the language will carry over to officers when they\u2019re using their discretion on determining to arrest someone on a THC possession charge, whether a collected compound falls under the controlled substances list or not.<\/p>\n

Ground Game Texas has successfully collected over 20,000 signatures from registered voters in Houston, and the proposal will officially be a voting item on the November ballot.<\/p>\n

However, even if passed by voters, officers may still use their discretion to arrest someone on delta-8 and marijuana possession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014\u00a0A city charter focused on THC enforcement is heading to the November ballot for Houston voters. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12926,1658,132,1570,102,138,56,58,57,223,287,82,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-417374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-andres-rendon","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-austin","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}