Texas modestly expands medical marijuana
Romana Harding had reached her limit. After moving to Texas from California, where she could legally use medical cannabis, the Navy veteran and sexual assault survivor had no choice but to try psychiatric medications to treat her post-traumatic stress disorder.
Yet the drugs left her feeling numb and emotionless. Suicidal feelings that had prompted her to crawl into a closet, take a .45 to her chin and nearly pull the trigger years earlier, before she discovered marijuana as a treatment, had resurfaced.
“I said, ‘Doctor, this stuff is killing me,’ ” Harding, who now lives in Cleveland, Texas, recalled. “I can’t feel anything, I don’t feel safe driving, I can’t read, I can’t figure out what to make for dinner, and my husband really wants me to start going back to cannabis.”
To Harding’s surprise, her doctor was supportive even though she couldn’t legally use cannabis to treat her condition in Texas. But come Sept. 1, Texans such as Harding who struggle with PTSD will be able to medicate with low-thc cannabis products.
Lawmakers this session added the disorder, as well as any stage of cancer, to the list of qualifying conditions allowed under the state’s modest Compassionate Use Program for medical marijuana. Terminal cancer has
been covered by the program since 2019.
It’s yet to be seen how many people will choose to participate in the medical marijuana program. In 2017, more than 114,000 Texans had a cancer diagnosis, according to the state health department.
The state does not keep estimates of PTSD patients, but nationally about 7 to 8 percent of the U.S. population will have PTSD at some point in their lives, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The sponsor of the bill that will expand the program, state Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-fort Worth, said that she originally intended to cover only veterans with PTSD. But in examining research about the efficacy of cannabis products in treating PTSD and statistics on who suffers from the disorder, she learned that she’d leave out many Texans and amended the legislation to include them.
Harding’s trauma stems from multiple rapes by supervisors and others while in the Navy, not from combat. She’s not alone.
According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Health, close to 50 percent of PTSD cases in the U.S. are caused by sexual or physical violence. About 30 percent of PTSD is related to sexual violence alone.
“You’re more likely to have PTSD from sexual assault, a much higher incidence (than other traumatic events),” Klick said. “I really question some of the PTSD statistics we have nationally. It doesn’t capture all of those that might be suffering from PTSD.”
David Bass, a U.S. Army veteran who founded Texas Veterans for Medical Marijuana, said the change is a long time coming. His was among the groups that pushed lawmakers not to limit the program just to veterans with PTSD, something the group had been lobbying for since the program first passed six years ago.
‘Makes us criminals’
Bass, who has used cannabis to treat his PTSD since 2012, had a similar experience to Harding’s using legal medications.
“We tried the treatment, which is taking pills, all kinds of pills for PTSD, and we hate those pills. We hated the side effects. We hated becoming dependent on that psychotropic medication,” he said of himself and his veteran friends. “Then when we used cannabis, a natural medicine, all those side effects went away, and it’s much more effective.”
“I’m not the only one,” he added. “The problem is that makes us criminals in Texas.”
House Bill 1535 was originally written to include patients with chronic pain who would otherwise be treated with opioids, as well as those with any condition that was approved for a research program and for which the patient was being treated. It also would have allowed the Texas Department of State Health Services to add conditions administratively, rather than waiting on the Legislature to pass laws.
The Senate stripped those provisions and scaled back the proposed increase in the legal limit for THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis. Instead of going from 0.5 percent to 5 percent, as proposed in the House bill, the new law bumps the limit to 1 percent.
Hemp products containing cannabidiol, or CBD, made legal by the federal and state governments in 2019, are allowed to contain up to 0.3 percent THC.
Jax Finkel, deputy director of Texas NORML, a promarijuana advocacy group, said that leaving the cap so low requires manufacturers to add more carrier oil, essentially filler, to their products to meet that standard, which can cause gastrointestinal issues for users.
“There’s a misunderstanding about what that percentage cap does,” Finkel said. “It doesn’t affect access to dosing as doctors want — it dilutes the product so that they then have the side effects.”
Klick shares the frustrations of those who wish to see faster progress in Texas on medical marijuana.
“I would have liked to have additional (medical) conditions in the bill, but this will help more people” than before, she said. She also was disappointed that the Senate lowered the THC limit. But, she said, “I’d rather have some progress than none.”
Patrick blocks efforts
Texas is among 47 states and four territories that offer medical marijuana programs; however, it’s one of 11 restrictive states that limit patients to low-thc products, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
When Texas established its medical cannabis program in 2015, it was only made available to epilepsy patients who did not respond well to other treatments.
In 2019, Klick, over strong opposition from some senators, successfully ushered a bill through the Legislature that added a slew of conditions, including autism, multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
A major roadblock to such bills has been Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who has cited concerns that expanding the program or decriminalizing low-level possession would open the door to recreational legalization.
In 2019, Patrick essentially declared a bill dead-onarrival that would have reduced penalties for Texans found with small amounts of marijuana, saying he was joining “with those House Republicans who oppose this step toward legalization of marijuana.”
But Klick and advocates sense attitudes are changing. After the program was created, she said, many lawmakers came back to say they had spoken with constituents who benefited from it and were glad that they had passed it.
The same trend was also noticed by Harding, the Navy veteran from Montgomery County who has been advocating for medical marijuana for the past four legislative sessions.
She said she’ll ask lawmakers, “Do you think I should be a criminal for using my medication this way?” Not a single one has said yes.
Harding says she’s eager to give Texas’ program a chance. As much as she’d like to use the products legally, though, the 1 percent THC products may not be enough to give her relief. Family members have urged her to go back to buying illegally if she needs to.
Lawmakers need to understand that people aren’t going to quit using marijuana as medication just because it’s against the law, she said.
“We’re not going to stop,” she said. “This is our life and death.”