Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was clear from the beginning.
Weeks earlier than this yr’s legislative session started, and earlier than he introduced another priorities, the Republican Senate chief stated he needed lawmakers to ban, at any value, merchandise that comprise the psychoactive compound in weed. His goal was the multibillion-dollar hemp business that had sprouted up due to a loophole in a 2019 state legislation that legalized merchandise offering an identical excessive to marijuana.
Patrick justified his conviction by contending that retailers had abused that loophole to promote merchandise with harmful quantities of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. He accused the retailers of preying on the state’s younger individuals with outlets posted close to colleges and advertising and marketing geared toward kids.
“I could not, in good conscience, depart right here realizing if we don’t do one thing about it within the subsequent two years — what number of youngsters get sick?” Patrick stated in March, speaking about his willingness to power a particular legislative session by blocking must-pass laws from making it via the Texas Senate.
And finally, Patrick received his manner — and an explosion of backlash.
As stress mounts on the governor to veto a THC ban despatched to his desk, Patrick finds himself within the unfamiliar place of taking flak from conservative activists and media personalities outdoors the Capitol, lots of whom sometimes march in political lockstep with a person who has lengthy been a darling of the best and accomplished greater than maybe another elected official to drive Texas rightward.
After spearheading the THC ban, Patrick has been accused by some on the best of making a nanny state and giving Mexican drug cartels a enterprise alternative to fill demand within the black market. He has been labeled a booze foyer shill for beer distributors who stand to learn. A hardline conservative state lawmaker who voted towards the ban stated it contradicted “the Texas mantra of being pro-business, pro-farmer and pro-veteran.”
A Patrick spokesperson didn’t reply to requests for remark.
“That is silly,” Dana Loesch, the previous Nationwide Rifle Affiliation spokesperson who’s now the host of a nationally syndicated conservative discuss radio present, wrote on social media in response to Patrick’s argument that the ban would preserve THC away from kids. “It’s just like the gun ban argument with a unique variable. Youngsters aren’t shopping for it anymore than another managed product (alcohol, cigarettes, et al) and if they’re, do your job as a dad or mum and dad or mum as an alternative of idiotically increasing authorities.”
Earlier than the blowback erupted from inside his home, Patrick courted Republicans in each chambers of the Legislature to go Senate Invoice 3. The legislation bans merchandise containing THC — and would eradicate the state’s $8 billion hemp business and its estimated 50,000 jobs if it survives Gov. Greg Abbott’s veto pen and anticipated authorized challenges.
Abbott, whose workplace has been inundated with calls to veto SB 3, has not revealed his intentions for the proposed legislation. The governor may signal SB 3 into legislation, veto it or do nothing and let it turn into legislation with out his signature.
Proponents of the ban have argued it’s wanted to rein in a wild west business that is promoting merchandise with dangerously excessive ranges of THC and with out correct oversight. Patrick has argued it will be unrealistic to control the business beneath tighter guardrails — as hemp enterprise leaders and others proposed — as a result of doing so would require an inconceivable quantity of manpower.
Lawmakers additionally handed a invoice to increase the state’s medical marijuana program by providing extra merchandise and including extra qualifying situations, an olive department extension to vets and THC customers with persistent situations who opposed the retail ban.
Patrick stated the medical growth “will assist these in true want of reduction.” However he and his allies have remained steadfast behind the THC ban, even amid pushback from the best.
“Retailers throughout Texas have exploited a state agriculture legislation to promote life-threatening, unregulated types of tetrahydrocannabinol to Texans,” stated Sen. Charles Perry, the Lubbock Republican who carried SB 3, when the higher chamber accepted the invoice. “These rogue retailers are promoting THC merchandise containing a number of instances extra THC content material than marijuana bought from a drug supplier off the road. These harmful merchandise should not be allowed to permeate our communities and endanger Texas kids.”
Criticism on the best has come from veterans who say they use the merchandise as options to opioid painkillers to assist with quite a lot of ails, business leaders who say the Republican-controlled state is popping its again on small companies, and conservative politicos who haven’t any scarcity of arrows they’ve been aiming at Patrick.
“What lives have been destroyed by low grade THC outlets, Dan? Are you able to identify one?” Kenny Webster, a Houston conservative discuss radio host, posted on social media. “Only one. Go forward.”
Some latest scrutiny was pushed by a information convention Patrick known as to push again on criticism of the ban, even after it had already cleared each chambers and was on its strategy to Abbott’s desk. Flanked by senators and legislation enforcement officers, Patrick stood in entrance of quite a lot of THC merchandise laid out on a desk and made his case.
The lieutenant governor stated he needed to encourage the information media to jot down in regards to the risks of THC. He additionally stated he had “whole confidence within the governor. … I am not apprehensive in regards to the governor understanding it. I am apprehensive about you all understanding it.”
At one level Patrick lobbed a bag of edibles at a reporter. He later requested one other reporter if he was “loopy” for inquiring in regards to the transfer to restrict adults’ entry to the merchandise.
“If he was attempting to make a case for a THC ban, I am unable to consider a weirder and counterproductive spectacle than yesterday’s press convention,” stated Rolando Garcia, a member of the State Republican Government Committee who routinely criticizes GOP lawmakers for perceived breaches of conservative orthodoxy. “We’ve got a mad king surrounded by courtiers and sure males afraid to inform him he is making a idiot of himself.”
Some opponents of the overall ban have vowed retribution towards Patrick, who’s operating for reelection in 2026 armed with an endorsement from President Donald Trump and greater than $33 million in his marketing campaign coffers. These components — and Patrick’s lengthy historical past of selling insurance policies that almost all main voters see as increased priorities than preserving THC entry — imply it’s unlikely the blowback will value Patrick a lot, in keeping with political observers.
“It is onerous to think about given Patrick’s place and the place he’s now that one way or the other that is going to be in and of itself the supply of some elementary political menace,” stated Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Undertaking on the College of Texas at Austin. “Truthfully I feel we’re not used to seeing Dan Patrick criticized very a lot from inside his personal celebration and so it is actually protruding, and that is honest.”
In the meantime, one other member of the SREC, Morgan Eakin, on social media questioned Patrick’s conservative bona fides by pointing to when Patrick got here beneath hearth from his personal celebration over gun rights.
Because the Legislature in 2021 contemplated letting most Texans carry a handgun with out a license or coaching, Patrick at first stated the Senate didn’t have the votes to go the measure.
Lawmakers finally handed the invoice, usually referred to by Republicans as constitutional carry due to their perception that it’s an American’s constitutional proper to pack warmth with out involving the federal government.
“We’ve got to ask ourselves how so many have been gaslit into believing the Senate and Dan Patrick have been constantly extra according to primary constitutional ideas and that [former House Speaker Dade Phelan] and the Home have been unequivocally liberal,” Eakin wrote.
Phelan, a Beaumont Republican who clashed with Patrick throughout his time as speaker, weighed in on SB 3 Monday, writing on social media that “Texans don’t need a complete ban.”
“They do need a cheap, regulated hemp market freed from harmful merchandise — particularly these marketed and bought to minors,” Phelan, who voted for the invoice, wrote. “The gasoline station rubbish should go whereas Texans benefit from the freedom they count on from conservative governance.”
Regardless of the blowback, Patrick stays a champion of conservative insurance policies and key participant in GOP victories. This session alone, state lawmakers handed stiffer bail legal guidelines, required that almost all sheriffs work with federal immigration authorities and accepted measures permitting time for prayer in public colleges and requiring school rooms to show the Ten Commandments.
Patrick has not often taken a lot warmth from his personal celebration. One notable occasion was additionally associated to weapons after a pair of mass shootings.
In 2019, a gunman desirous to quell an “invasion” of Hispanic immigrants went to a Walmart in El Paso, the place he opened hearth and murdered 23 individuals and wounded 22 others. Shortly after that assault, a gunman terrorized Midland and Odessa with a capturing spree that resulted within the deaths of eight individuals.
Patrick stated it was excessive time the state required background checks on gun gross sales between strangers.
“Somebody within the Republican Social gathering has to take the lead on this,” he stated on the time, including that he was “keen to take an arrow” for the stance.
The backlash, as soon as once more, was swift. His conservatism was known as into query and a few on the best even painted him as an even bigger menace to weapons than Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who had infamously stated throughout a presidential debate the identical yr, “Hell sure, we’re going to take your AR-15.”
Patrick withstood the pushback. And lawmakers by no means accepted laws he known as for regulating personal stranger-to-stranger gun gross sales. Since permitting permitless carry in 2021, lawmakers have expanded entry to firearms, together with with a invoice this yr to legalize sawed-off shotguns, amongst different victories for gun rights advocates.
The dearth of fallout from Patrick’s push to control personal gun gross sales could supply a clue about how the SB 3 state of affairs will shake out. Patrick acquired 77% of the 2022 GOP main vote towards solely token opposition, and he was simply reelected in November.
