It’s not worth it to prosecute misdemeanor marijuana offenses given the lab testing procedures now required by new state and federal laws, say Texas attorneys who are not prosecuting such crimes, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Due to those laws, most labs in Texas cannot create test results that can tell the difference between what is illegal marijuana and legal hemp. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dennis Bonnen, and Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to district attorneys encouraging them to continue to prosecute marijuana offenses, no matter how small. The letter was likely an attempt to deflect criticism coming from their constituencies, says David Sloane, a Fort Worth attorney specializing in defending marijuana cases. “It’s real easy to sit in Austin and ask prosecutors across the state to prosecute cases riddled with reasonable doubt,” Sloane said. “The governor is asking prosecutors in this state to do something unethical.”
The new state and federal laws defined legal hemp or hemp-derived products as substances that contained less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that produces a high. Before the law change, all Texas labs had to report was whether a suspected cannabis sample contained any THC, If the sample had no THC, it was presumed to be legal. New laws calling for labs to measure the percentage of THC in a sample have caused state labs to say they cannot tell what might be legal or illegal. Lacking a definitive test, prosecutors statewide have decided not to take cases where the offender is suspected of having possession of a small amount of marijuana. State lab officials reached out to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and have developed a plan that could create a workable testing protocol within three-to-six months.