Inside the judging, the winners, and why Texas growers held their own.
The Blazed Texas Flower Challenge brought together serious heat from across the country. Twenty one entrants. Five judges. One simple scoring system designed to cut through hype and get straight to the flower.
Each entry was scored from 1 to 5 across four core categories: Aroma, Taste, Visual Aesthetics, and Efficacy. No gimmicks. No brand bias. Just the plant, presented as-is. As one of the five judges, I can say this confidently: the overall quality level was high. There were no throwaway entries. Even the lower rankings showed care, intention, and solid cultivation fundamentals.
But a few stood out immediately, and by the time the scores were tallied, Texas growers had made it clear they belonged at the very top of the field. How the Judging Worked All flower was evaluated blind. Judges worked independently, focusing on consistency across categories rather than chasing one standout trait. Loud aroma without flavor did not carry the day.
Pretty buds without effect did not either. The highest scoring entries delivered balance. Clean terp profiles. Proper cure. Flavor that translated from nose to exhale. And effects that matched expectations.
First Place Winner Raw Gas Club – Animal Mintz
Animal Mintz took the top spot for good reason, and its win carried extra weight. In a national field, a Texas-grown entry rose to first place, setting the tone for what would become a strong showing from in-state cultivators. This evenly balanced hybrid brought everything together in one jar.
From the moment it was opened, the aroma hit with sweet mint, cookie dough, and a sharp edge of diesel and pine. The flavor followed through cleanly, with a minty cookie inhale and a lightly nutty vanilla finish. Visually, the flower checked all the boxes. Forest green buds, bright amber hairs, dense trichome coverage, and a sticky resin coat that spoke to proper harvest timing and cure.
The effects sealed it. A heavy cerebral onset that eased into full-body relaxation without immediately knocking you out. Potent, but not sloppy. With reported THC levels in the mid to high 20s, it delivered long-lasting relief and deep sedation when leaned into. This was a complete flower. No weak links.
The Rest of the Podium Second place The Dope Co. – Super Buff Cherry Third place Geremy Greens – Koolato Third place marked another big moment for Texas.
Geremy Greens secured a podium finish with Koolato. This one deserves special mention. Koolato was my personal top flower of the competition. The terp profile stood out, the structure was dialed in, and the overall presentation showed real grower intention. Geremy Greens also grows a Texas Shoreline cultivar that I would love to see in future competitions. If Koolato is any indication, that one could be special. Beyond the Podium: Depth of the Field Just outside the podium, the competition remained tight, with several entries separated by only fractions of a point.
Fourth place went to Loud Puff with Scented Marker, a standout that impressed judges with its distinct terpene profile and overall balance.
Fifth place saw a three-way tie, underscoring just how competitive the field was this year. Dank Fil A earned its spot with Dank Poison, while A Treez delivered a strong showing with Wid Bill OG. Rounding out the tie was Moon Man, whose Pink Gumbo brought enough flavor and effect to keep it firmly in the top tier. The runner-up category featured a deep bench of quality cultivators. Sixth place was shared by Wyatt Purp and Endozondo, both of whom submitted flowers that consistently scored well across aroma, taste, and efficacy.
Seventh place went to Legend Cannabis Co. with Legend Candy, a clean and well-executed entry that hovered just outside the top six. Eighth place was another three-way tie, with Happy Cactus (Dante’s Inferno), Haze Connect (Dumb Gas), and EZ Grown (Sherb n Runtz) all landing in striking distance of one another. Each brought something different to the table, but all demonstrated solid cultivation and curing practices. Ninth place followed the same pattern, with 3GCC (Northern Haze) and Gruene Botanicals (Turbo Glue) finishing neck and neck.
Rounding out the top ten was Errganix with Jokers Candy, a respectable finish in a crowded and competitive lineup. Finally, several entries earned honorable mention for their effort and presence in the field. Green Diamond, JK Distro, Reggie & Dro, Looper, and Dope Pros all contributed to the overall depth of the competition and helped make this year’s Blazed Texas Flower Challenge one of the most competitive to date.
When you step back and look at the full field, one thing is clear: the margin between placements was thin, the quality bar was high, and Texas growers were not just competitive, they were leading the charge.
A Texas Takeaway Two of the top three finishers were Texas growers, and that matters. It shows that craft cultivation here is not just catching up, it is competing nationally.
Clean grows, strong genetics, and real attention to detail are becoming the norm, not the exception. The Blazed Texas Flower Challenge proved one thing clearly: when the plant is judged honestly, Texas flower belongs in the conversation. And based on what I tasted, this is only the beginning.
The Blazed Gummy Challenge: How It Works The Blazed Gummy Challenge is the next evolution of Blazed product competitions, built to evaluate one of the fastest-growing segments in the cannabis and hemp-derived market: edibles. Much like our Flower competitions, this challenge is designed to be structured, consistent, and experience-driven, while recognizing that gummies are consumed differently than flower and evaluated with more context around formulation, dosing, and intent.
The Goal The goal of the Blazed Gummy Challenge is simple: To identify the best gummies on the market based on quality, effectiveness, flavor, and overall experience across multiple dosage tiers and formulations.
This is not a popularity contest. It is an evaluation of how well a product performs for its intended audience.
Judging Panel • 5 total judges •
Judges include industry professionals, experienced consumers, and trusted Blazed contributors Because gummies are not blind-tested, judges are aware of brand, dosage, and formulation details.
This allows for more informed evaluations, particularly when it comes to potency accuracy, ingredient quality, and intended use. Each judge scores every entry independently.
Gummy Categories To ensure fair comparisons, gummies are divided into three distinct categories based on potency and formulation.
Low Grade Category: 5–25mg Designed to reflect everyday, approachable gummies. This category focuses on:
• Entry-level and moderate potency products • Gummies intended for casual or newer consumers • Balance, consistency, and overall enjoyability
High Grade Category: 50–100mg Built for experienced consumers who expect stronger, more pronounced effects. This category highlights: • Higher potency formulations • Effect clarity, strength, and duration • How well flavor and texture hold up at higher doses
Mushroom Category: 5–50mg A dedicated category for gummies formulated with mushroom compounds.
This includes: • Functional or psychoactive mushroom formulations • Balance between effects, flavor, and texture • How clearly the product delivers its intended experience Scoring System Each gummy is scored on a 1–5 scale in the following categories:
Judges are encouraged to consider how well each gummy delivers on its stated purpose and target consumer. Scores from all five judges are averaged to determine final rankings. Consumption and Evaluation Guidelines To maintain consistency and responsible judging:
• Judges follow standardized dosing guidelines
• Products may be evaluated over multiple sessions
• Judges document onset time, peak effects, and duration
• Adequate spacing between samples is required This approach ensures gummies are evaluated thoughtfully and responsibly. Final Results and Recognition Top-performing gummies in each category will receive:
• Industry credibility earned through consistent evaluation Recognition is based on performance, not hype. Why This Matters Gummies have become a primary consumption method for a large segment of cannabis consumers. As the market grows more crowded, thoughtful evaluations matter more than ever.
The Blazed Gummy Challenge exists to spotlight products that execute well, respect the consumer, and deliver on their promises. If you are entering, know this: We are judging the gummy, not the marketing.
To submit you gummy brand, simply purchase a display Ad for sale.
For nearly half a century, Steven Spielberg has used cinema to rehearse humanity for a moment he has never fully shown on screen: official extraterrestrial disclosure.
His protégé, J. J. Abrams, inherited this framework—and in Super 8, echoed it with near-surgical precision. When viewed alongside Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the similarities are not homage alone. They form a blueprint.
The Train Derailment: A Disclosure Trigger
In Super 8, the story detonates when a catastrophic train derailment shatters the calm of a small American town. The military swiftly arrives, sealing off the area, controlling information, and reframing the incident as a public safety concern.
In Close Encounters, the same mechanism is deployed—decades earlier.
The climactic contact event at Devil’s Tower is made possible only after a manufactured emergency: the public is told a train derailment spilled toxic chemicals, justifying evacuation. This false flag clears the area for the rendezvous while Roy Neary and others move toward the truth.
Two films. Same narrative lever.
The train derailment is not chaos—it is logistics. Domestic Normalcy Meets the Impossible
Spielberg and Abrams both anchor disclosure not in the skies—but in the living room.
Super 8
As morning routines unfold, TV news reports the derailment. Children bang toys in the background. When Joe Lamb enters the house, Charles is transfixed by a small black-and-white television broadcasting the crisis.
Close Encounters
Roy Neary watches the same kind of broadcast—alone, desperate, drinking Budweiser—as his family life collapses. The derailment near Devil’s Tower interrupts domestic despair, not adventure.
In both films:
The television is small
The image is grainy
The family is fractured
The truth arrives quietly, not spectacularly
Disclosure doesn’t crash through the roof. It leaks in through the TV.
Toy Trains, Fractions, and Repetition
Spielberg’s visual language is obsessive—and deliberate.
Roy Neary explains fractions to his son using toy train cars, just before offering a choice between Goofy Golf or Pinocchio. The banging of toys punctuates the moment—echoing later scenes of domestic unrest.
In Super 8, Joe Lamb paints model trains in his spare time. The derailment becomes personal before it becomes cosmic.
Model trains are not props.
They are preconditioning tools—symbols of control, order, and derailment. Abrams doesn’t just salute Spielberg here. He repeats the lesson. Loss of Family as the Cost of Truth. Both films are built on trauma. Joe Lamb loses his mother in a sudden industrial accident. Roy Neary loses his family—and eventually leaves Earth entirely. In both cases, disclosure costs something permanent.
This theme deepens when viewed alongside Spielberg’s later autobiographical work, The Fabelmans, where parental divorce is revealed as a defining wound. The same absence echoes through E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with Elliott’s father quietly gone—off in Mexico with another woman.
What will that day look like?
Contact is never free.
Truth rearranges families & Children as the Disclosure Constant
Across Spielberg’s universe—and Abrams’ continuation—children are always ready.
E.T.
Super 8
Close Encounters
Even Taken
Adults panic. Institutions lie. While Children adapt. If disclosure happens, Spielberg suggests, it will not break the young—it will expose the old.
Disclosure Day 2026: Cinema or Conditioning?
The question is no longer if disclosure will come—but how it will be framed.
Will it arrive: As a Spielberg-directed return to the genre by cinema’s greatest architect of UFO storytelling?
Or as another government-aligned narrative, laundered through Hollywood to guide public reaction?
Spielberg’s filmography already includes: Close Encounters, E.T. , War of the Worlds , Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, A.I. Transformers, Men in Black (producer), Amazing Stories, & Taken to name a few.
Decades of preparation. Decades of normalization.
Final Thought
Spielberg never taught us to fear aliens. He taught us to fear being lied to. If Disclosure Day comes, it won’t look like a blockbuster. It will look like a news report…playing softly in the background…while families argue in the next room. The only remaining question is whether Spielberg will finally show us the moment he’s spent a lifetime preparing us to see.
The better question is simpler and more unnerving: what happens when a President decides the machinery already sitting on the table should finally be used the way it was built to be used—and staffs the relevant agencies with people who don’t confuse delay with virtue.
According to the Washington Post, Trump has been discussing an executive order aimed at reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz in the room and Speaker Mike Johnson on the phone opposing it. Reuters reported the same expectation and the market reaction, while noting the decision was not yet final.
The story here is not magic presidential power. The story is tempo, personnel, and a rescheduling docket that already exists—complete with the scientific recommendation, the proposed rule, and the procedural knots that kept it from crossing the finish line.
What an executive order can and cannot do
A President cannot personally rewrite the drug schedules by proclamation. The Controlled Substances Act does not hand the Oval Office a Sharpie and a scheduling chart. It hands the executive branch a process, and it places the legal “move the substance” act inside DOJ and the DEA, with HHS supplying the scientific and medical backbone.
What the President can do is command priorities inside the executive branch. He can set deadlines, change leadership, direct litigation posture, and tell DOJ and HHS that the rescheduling project is no longer a file that sits under a coffee mug until the next election. The Post’s reporting makes that managerial theory of power explicit: Trump can’t unilaterally reschedule marijuana, but he can direct the Justice Department to push through the rulemaking—potentially even by bypassing the ongoing administrative hearing.
That distinction matters because it turns the pundit question—“Can he?”—into the real-world one—“How fast will his agencies move, and how clean will the record be when the lawsuits start?”
The rescheduling file is already open and already thick
This did not begin as a Trump brainstorm. It began when President Biden asked for a review in October 2022. HHS conducted its scientific and medical evaluation and, in August 2023, recommended moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.
In May 2024, DOJ/DEA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to transfer marijuana to Schedule III. That is the formal start of the legal act that changes the schedule: notice-and-comment rulemaking, the kind that lives forever in the administrative record and gets dissected in court.
This is the part commentators routinely skip: the government already did the hardest, slowest work—assembling the scientific recommendation, moving it through DOJ, and publishing a proposed rule. That means Trump isn’t trying to invent a pathway. He’s trying to accelerate a pathway that already exists.
The statutory lever Biden pulled and Trump can yank harder
The Controlled Substances Act sets up a two-agency structure. DEA (through DOJ) has scheduling authority, but before DOJ can move, it must get HHS’s written scientific and medical evaluation and recommendation. The statute then makes HHS unusually powerful in one specific way: HHS’s recommendations are binding on the Attorney General “as to such scientific and medical matters.”
DOJ itself emphasized this constraint in a 2024 memo responding to questions about marijuana rescheduling, noting again that HHS’s scientific and medical determinations are binding on DOJ in the process.
In other words, the science call is already on paper, already transmitted, and already baked into the proposed rulemaking record. Trump doesn’t need to “prove” marijuana has accepted medical use from scratch. He needs his administration to finish the regulatory job that has been marinating in procedure.
Where the Biden process got bogged down
Rulemaking is where Washington goes to “act” while remaining emotionally committed to not acting.
After DEA proposed rescheduling, the agency moved into a hearing posture. A Federal Register notice set the hearing process in motion for the proposed Schedule III transfer.
Then the process hit administrative turbulence. By early 2025, credible policy and legal analysis described the hearings as postponed or cancelled pending an interlocutory appeal and related procedural issues. The Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law tracks that the hearing scheduled to begin in January 2025 was postponed while an appeal was resolved.
This is the “legal limbo” the Post is talking about when it describes a White House considering bypassing the administrative hearing.
So Trump isn’t stepping into a pristine process. He’s stepping into a stalled one, and that stall creates a political opportunity: declare the delay unacceptable, then order DOJ and DEA to produce a final rule on a faster internal schedule.
Why courts sometimes stop executive branch power, and why rescheduling is a different animal
Every serious executive power story eventually meets its natural predator: the federal judge with a calendar.
When courts crush executive action, they usually do it for two reasons. The first is that the President tried to exercise power Congress never granted. Youngstown Sheet & Tube is the canonical case: Truman seized steel mills during the Korean War, and the Supreme Court held he lacked constitutional or statutory authority to do it.
The second reason is procedural: the executive branch claims it is acting under a statute, but it tries to shortcut the legally required process, or it produces a record so thin it fails basic administrative-law review. That is the kind of vulnerability that haunts immigration “big moves,” including the Obama-era DAPA litigation, where courts accepted arguments that the program likely exceeded statutory authority and ran afoul of required constraints, freezing it before it could take effect.
Trump knows this terrain because he has lived it. His original 2017 travel ban was rapidly blocked, revised, and fought through the courts until the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the third iteration in Trump v. Hawaii.
Marijuana rescheduling does not resemble Youngstown in its core authority question, because Congress delegated drug scheduling authority to the executive branch through the CSA. The Congressional Research Service summarizes the two routes clearly: Congress can schedule by statute, or the Attorney General (delegated to DEA), in conjunction with HHS, can schedule via the administrative process in the CSA.
That does not make it immune. It simply shifts the likely battlefield from “you have no authority” to “you did not follow the law’s process” and “your rule is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.” Courts reviewing agency action look for reasoned decisionmaking, not vibes. State Farm is a classic reminder that agencies must provide a rational explanation grounded in the record when they act.
That is why the Post’s “bypass the hearing” detail is both the accelerant and the hazard. Speed helps Trump politically. Sloppiness helps his challengers legally.
The Guardrails Myth, and the People Who Actually Pull the Levers
This is where the conversation stops being academic and becomes operational, because Washington has always been run less by constitutional theory than by human beings with badges, budgets, and signature blocks.
During Trump’s first administration, a comforting storyline took hold among donors, columnists, and the “I read The Federalist Papers once on a plane” set: the grownups were in charge. The President would be “managed.” Serious national-security types, conventional Republicans, and institutionalists would keep the guardrails up—protect the system from Trump’s own impulses, or at least sand down the sharp edges before they reached the rest of us. That “adults in the room” idea wasn’t a fringe whisper; it became a mainstream way of reassuring anxious elites that the state would remain on autopilot even if the cockpit was chaos.
Trump’s first term was what happened when that fantasy met a President who treats dissent as disloyalty and disloyalty as a firing offense. The result was not a calm, disciplined executive branch. It was churn. High turnover became a defining feature, and nowhere did the revolving door spin faster—or more publicly—than in the communications and press operation, which cycled through leadership at a rate that made prior administrations look monastic. Brookings tracked the rapid succession of communications directors and press secretaries; Axios, among others, documented the same “revolving door” pattern in real time.
That history matters because it explains what “personnel is policy” really means in Trump-world. The first-term model—hire people to restrain him, then punish them when they try—left behind a trail of burned reputations, abrupt departures, and cautionary tales that every ambitious appointee in Washington has been studying ever since. The institutionalists who thought their job was to manage the President discovered that, in this White House, the job description is simpler: execute the President’s priorities, on the President’s timeline, and don’t confuse your conscience with a veto.
The second-term environment has only intensified that lesson—not just through political appointments, but through the broader effort to “optimize” government itself. Trump signed orders pushing agencies toward workforce reductions and reorganizations tied to the “Department of Government Efficiency” effort associated with Elon Musk, a campaign framed as cost-cutting and anti-waste but experienced inside agencies as disruption with real institutional casualties. Government Executive reported on orders requiring agencies to plan layoffs and coordinate workforce reductions through DOGE.
And people did not merely grumble. They left. In February 2025, resignations by federal technologists connected to the former U.S. Digital Service became a national story because the departing staff described the DOGE shift as incompatible with protecting core systems and public services; the Associated Press covered the resignations and the language of the protest letter, and Politico reported the same episode as an internal revolt over how DOGE was being carried out. The Washington Post simultaneously reported sharp concerns about DOGE’s access to sensitive data and the legal and security alarms it triggered, along with litigation and judicial intervention.
In any other country, a wealthy private actor barreling through state systems, slashing capacity, and grabbing data would invite vocabulary Americans are trained to avoid saying out loud. Here we call it “efficiency” and argue about the font on the organizational chart. Either way, the practical takeaway is the same: the second-term executive branch is structured—and scarred—by the memory of what happened to people who mistook themselves for guardrails.
That brings us back to marijuana rescheduling, because this is not a policy that executes itself. If the White House decides to push Schedule III quickly, it will be done by the people sitting at the choke points.
Pam Bondi, as Attorney General, sits atop DOJ and therefore above DEA in the chain of command, and DOJ publicly documents her swearing-in. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as HHS Secretary, controls how aggressively HHS defends and reinforces the existing scientific and medical evaluation that already undergirds the rescheduling effort. HHS documents his swearing-in. Terrance C. “Terry” Cole, as DEA Administrator, leads the agency that ultimately issues the final rule that changes the schedule; DEA documents his swearing-in. Mehmet Oz, as CMS Administrator, doesn’t decide scheduling, but he matters to the politics and downstream health-policy posture that will be used to sell and normalize the shift; his confirmation and swearing-in are documented in public reporting and official coverage.
One detail has to be stated cleanly because precision is armor in a fight like this: Sara Carter is not the sitting ONDCP Director. Her nomination was withdrawn, and contemporaneous public materials identify Jon E. Rice as the senior official performing the duties of director in an acting capacity.
None of this “guarantees” rescheduling. Courts exist. Procedure exists. Opposition exists. But it does change the internal physics. Trump’s first term trained Washington that appointees hired to “manage” him do not last. His second term has added a broader lesson: disruption is not an accident; it is a governing style. In that context, when the White House decides a stalled rulemaking must move, the people in the relevant seats are far less likely to treat delay as a virtue—and far more likely to treat it as insubordination.
How the move would unfold in the real world
Assuming Trump issues the order described in the Post and Reuters reporting, the near-term mechanics are straightforward.
The White House would frame the executive order as a directive to DOJ and HHS to complete rescheduling expeditiously. The legal work would not be done by the President’s signature; it would be done by the final rule published by DEA/DOJ.
HHS’s role would largely be to stand behind the existing scientific and medical evaluation and to ensure the record remains coherent. Because the CSA makes HHS’s scientific and medical determinations binding on DOJ “as to such scientific and medical matters,” HHS is not window dressing in this process; it is the statutory spine.
DOJ and DEA would then have to decide how to resolve the existing hearing posture and produce a final rule. The final rule is where the schedule actually changes. The administrative posture matters because it shapes the record that courts will review. The Moritz Drug Enforcement and Policy Center timeline and other legal analyses reflect that the hearing has already been postponed and the proceeding snarled by appeal.
This is why the “bypass the hearing” concept is so politically attractive: it treats the stalled hearing track as a problem to be cleared, not an altar to be worshiped. It’s also why opponents will sue. They will argue the agency failed to provide required process, ignored objections, or violated the APA. Trump’s DOJ will argue the core statutory prerequisites were satisfied—HHS delivered the scientific recommendation and DEA followed rulemaking requirements—while insisting the executive branch has discretion to manage its internal proceedings and move to final agency action.
If Trump’s team moves carefully, it can publish a final rule quickly while keeping the record defensible. If it moves recklessly, it may still publish a final rule quickly, but it could lose the first emergency motion in federal court, buying opponents months of delay and a narrative that the administration cut corners.
Why this feels inevitable, even though it is not automatic
The strongest argument that Trump can pull this off is not ideological. It is bureaucratic.
The rescheduling project already has the fundamental prerequisites: a written HHS recommendation, a published NPRM, and a process that is already deep into the administrative pipeline.
The strongest argument that Trump will try is political: this is a high-salience move that can be framed as modernizing federal policy without “legalizing marijuana,” and it can be pitched as freeing research while shifting enforcement focus toward fentanyl and other lethal drugs. That framing fits neatly inside Trump’s preferred “tough on the real poison” posture, while offering real economic and regulatory consequences for the cannabis industry.
The strongest argument that he could still get slowed down is legal: the rule has to survive judicial review. Authority is the easy part here because Congress built a lane for the executive branch. Procedure is the hard part because courts can freeze agency action when the record looks rushed, incomplete, or internally contradictory.
That is the whole story. Not whether Trump owns a magic pen. Whether the executive branch he commands can move fast, stay inside the statutory guardrails, and absorb the litigation that comes with trying to make federal marijuana policy match the country it governs.
Before algorithms decided what Americans should think, before podcasts became corporate, and long before “alternative media” was a marketing category, there was Austin, Texas—hot, strange, conspiratorial, and wide open. Out of that chaos emerged Alex Jones: a bullhorn-wielding public-access firebrand who helped define a new era of outsider broadcasting and permanently altered the landscape of independent media.
I knew Alex in those early Austin days, when the city was still a weird crossroads of musicians, hackers, paranoids, libertarians, activists, pranksters, and true believers. This was a time when public-access television wasn’t a joke—it was a weapon. Cable studios, camcorders, and late-night airtime gave anyone with nerve and vision a chance to hijack the signal. Alex Jones didn’t just hijack it—he overclocked it.
Public Access as a Launchpad
In the mid-1990s, Alex Jones became a familiar and unavoidable presence on Austin public-access TV. Shirt sleeves rolled up, veins popping, voice cranked past eleven, he delivered monologues that blended government overreach, covert operations, corporate corruption, and historical revisionism into something closer to performance art than journalism. Whether you agreed with him or not almost didn’t matter—you watched.
Austin at the time was fertile ground for this kind of energy. The city incubated pirate radio, zines, underground magazines, access television personalities, and late-night call-in chaos. Alex understood instinctively that attention was currency. He also understood something many traditional journalists missed: people wanted narratives that challenged official stories, especially after Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, and the expanding surveillance state of the Clinton era.
Public access wasn’t a stepping stone for Alex—it was a proving ground.
The Birth of InfoWars
What began as a local broadcast evolved into something much bigger. InfoWars grew from a scrappy Austin operation into one of the most influential—and controversial—alternative media platforms in modern American history. Long before YouTube demonetization, shadow bans, or platform censorship became mainstream topics, Alex was building his own infrastructure: websites, radio syndication, mailing lists, direct-to-consumer sales, and loyal audiences that bypassed traditional gatekeepers entirely.
This was pioneering work. Love him or loathe him, Alex Jones proved that you didn’t need a newsroom, a network, or institutional approval to reach millions. He demonstrated that outrage, narrative framing, and direct audience connection could outperform polished suits and teleprompters.
Many who later built podcasts, Substacks, and independent media brands—knowingly or not—walked through doors Alex kicked open.
The Performance and the Persona
Alex Jones is not subtle. He never was. His genius—and his downfall—lies in his amplification. He treats broadcasting as confrontation, not conversation. The Alex Jones persona is part preacher, part carnival barker, part political street fighter. It’s a style rooted as much in wrestling promos and talk radio as in investigative journalism.
That approach made him unforgettable—and also dangerous to himself. As InfoWars grew, so did scrutiny, backlash, lawsuits, and cultural warfare. The same refusal to self-edit that fueled his rise also hardened him into a symbol: for supporters, a truth-telling rebel; for critics, a cautionary tale of unchecked rhetoric.
Alex Jones July 2001
In Weird Magazine terms, Alex Jones is a media cryptid—a creature born of the American subconscious, impossible to ignore, impossible to fully categorize.
Austin Origins, American Impact
It’s important to remember that Alex Jones is not a coastal media invention. He’s an Austin original—shaped by Texas independence, Southern distrust of authority, and a city that once thrived on letting weird experiments run wild. Austin gave him the runway; America gave him the megaphone.
Whether history ultimately remembers him as a pioneer, a provocateur, or a warning sign, one fact remains indisputable: Alex Jones helped redefine what independent media could be. He proved that outsiders could build empires, that public access could scale to global reach, and that belief—right or wrong—moves audiences more powerfully than neutrality ever has.
Weird Magazine, InfoWars, and the Print Underground (2002–2012)
What often gets lost in the digital retelling of the InfoWars story is its deep print-media footprint, particularly within Austin’s alternative press ecosystem. From 2002 through 2012, InfoWars articles and Prison Planet editorials from the Alex Jones camp appeared consistently in the pages of both the Austin Para Times and Weird Magazine—long before algorithm-driven distribution reshaped media economics.
This was not incidental exposure. It was a cross-pollination of underground media cultures: public-access television, pirate radio, print magazines, and early web publishing all feeding the same audience hungry for narratives outside institutional consensus.
No YouTube, no social media, no instant access to information.
During this period people listened to radio, waited for Wednesdays at 7pm on cable channel 10 to watch the Alex Jones show, not because you knew what was coming; but you watched the show to see what wasn’t coming! You never knew what tirade of anti government, spit of rage Jones was about to launch into at any moment. And often it was comical full of satire and humor with just enough edge that the point was made like no other late night talk show host had ever delivered before or since.
During this period, Alex Jones frequently shared and promoted Weird Magazine on his local Austin public-access programs, highlighting coverage that profiled his investigations, editorials, and worldview.
In the summer of 2012, that relationship formalized.
Alex Jones hired (me) Russell Dowden to manage and produce InfoWars Magazine July 1st 2012 , bringing the underground print ethos into a dedicated, national-facing publication. From 2012 to 2014, Dowden served as General Manager of InfoWars Magazine, or advertising executive overseeing production, operations, and editorial execution or managing advertising sales during a critical growth phase for the brand.
At a time when many media outlets were abandoning print entirely, InfoWars Magazine represented a deliberate counter-move—physical media as ideological artifact, designed to be collected, shared, and passed hand to hand. The magazine bridged Alex Jones’ broadcast persona with long-form editorial content, mirroring the earlier Weird Magazine model that had proven alternative ideas could survive—and thrive—outside corporate publishing structures.
This period stands as a reminder that InfoWars was not built solely on outrage clips or viral moments. It was also built on ink, paper, late-night layout sessions, and Austin’s long tradition of do-it-yourself publishing—a lineage that Weird Magazine helped establish and sustain.
Final Transmission
Weird Magazine exists to document the fringes before they become the center. Alex Jones came from the fringe and dragged it onto the main stage, kicking and screaming. His story is inseparable from Austin’s lost era of analog rebellion and America’s ongoing information war.
You don’t have to endorse the message to acknowledge the impact.
And you can’t tell the story of modern alternative media without saying his name.
For the first time, the nation’s biggest cannabis corporations—multi-state operators with headquarters, licenses, and major market share in Illinois and other key states—are lining up for a limited number of medical cannabis licenses here. These are the companies that dominate Chicago’s cannabis economy and reach deep into markets across the country. They are not unknown quantities. Their names appear again and again in court dockets, OSHA files, enforcement notices, ethics decisions, and class-action complaints.
If Texas chooses to let them in, it will be importing that history along with them.
DPS’s Scoring System: A Framework Without a Process
The Texas Department of Public Safety has published what it claims is a scoring rubric for Compassionate Use applicants. In reality, it is a handful of headings—security, financial responsibility, operations, and technical capability—devoid of detail. The document does not explain what constitutes a strong submission in any of those categories. It does not say how points are assigned, what makes a deficiency fatal, or whether out-of-state violations are considered at all.
Nowhere does DPS tell Texans whether a history of mislabeling products in Illinois matters. Nowhere does it say whether pesticide violations, unaccounted-for inventory, or OSHA findings from other states affect an applicant’s standing. There is no guidance on how regulators will treat companies accused of gaming potency limits, misclassifying products to evade state caps, or letting contaminated products reach patients.
The public is effectively asked to take DPS’s word for it that the agency is doing its job. That might be acceptable if DPS had a track record of transparent, scientifically grounded decision-making in this space. It does not.
The Armstrong Labs Warning Texas Has Not Heeded
The Armstrong Labs episode remains the clearest example of what happens when DPS makes critical decisions behind closed doors. A lab favored by law enforcement used a testing method that critics, attorneys, and the Texas Forensic Science Commission all said could convert THCA into delta-9 THC during analysis—transforming lawful hemp into apparent contraband. Retailers were raided, products were seized, and businesses collapsed, not because those businesses set out to break the law, but because DPS chose a contractor whose methodology could not withstand scientific scrutiny.
The Forensic Science Commission’s involvement underscored how serious the problem was. But DPS never gave Texans a full accounting of how it selected that lab, why it trusted that method, or how it planned to prevent similar failures in the future. It simply closed the door and moved on.
That kind of opacity might be survivable in a small program. It is reckless in a licensing round involving some of the largest and most legally exposed operators in the American cannabis industry.
The Illinois MSOs: A Record of Misconduct That Leads the Nation
To understand the risk Texas is facing, it is necessary to start where so much of the American cannabis business is headquartered: Illinois. The state has become a hub for multi-state operators, and the misconduct tied to those operators is now a matter of public record.
Cresco Labs, based in Chicago, is at the center of multiple lawsuits in Illinois accusing it of manipulating labels and product classifications to evade THC limits established under state law. In Matthews v. Cresco Labs and related cases, plaintiffs allege that Cresco mislabeled certain vapable oil products and deliberately classified infused products as “concentrates” so they could carry higher THC levels than Illinois law allows. These cases go to the heart of market integrity: if a medical cannabis company will not tell the truth on its labels, it cannot be trusted to protect patients or comply with dosage limits.
Green Thumb Industries, another Chicago-based giant, is facing its own THC-potency class action in Illinois, with plaintiffs alleging that GTI and its subsidiaries misrepresented the strength of their products. The company has also appeared in enforcement actions beyond Illinois. In New Jersey, regulators fined Green Thumb and Verano for rule violations, including failures around packaging, testing, and record-keeping. Together, these cases paint a picture of operators that routinely push or cross regulatory lines and then resist accountability when challenged.
Verano, also rooted in the Chicago market, shows up repeatedly in litigation and enforcement records. It was a co-defendant in an $860 million lawsuit tied to a failed acquisition, a case that highlighted aggressive, boom-time deal-making and the fallout when stock prices collapsed. Verano has been fined in New Jersey and has faced scrutiny in other states over compliance and rule adherence. It has settled complex litigation with another operator, Vireo Growth, after years of dispute, underscoring how much time and money these companies are willing to expend fighting over deals rather than focusing on stable, compliant operations.
PharmaCann, whose parent entity is organized as an Illinois LLC based in downtown Chicago, has faced worker-safety enforcement from OSHA and disciplinary action in Maryland. OSHA cited PharmaCann for potential workplace hazards at a greenhouse in New York; the company paid a fine to settle the case. In Maryland, regulators issued a consent order addressing violations of company code of conduct, including misappropriation and related misconduct. This is an operator that has struggled not just with regulatory compliance, but with internal culture and control.
Ascend Wellness, another major player with a strong Illinois footprint, has found itself simultaneously entangled in litigation and ethics concerns. In Illinois, Ascend has been hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging its vape products misled consumers—part of a broader wave of potency and labeling suits hitting the state’s largest operators. Separately, the Illinois Office of Executive Inspector General found that a deputy director of the state’s cannabis regulation office accepted employment with Ascend while still serving in his government role, flagging the kind of revolving-door risk that can erode public trust in any licensing regime. Ascend has also drawn enforcement in Massachusetts, where regulators have named it alongside other national firms in disciplinary actions.
These are not marginal actors. Cresco, Green Thumb, Verano, PharmaCann, and Ascend together represent the core of Illinois’s MSO tier. Their violations span mislabeling, misclassification to evade potency caps, worker-safety hazards, rule violations in multiple states, and ethics concerns involving former regulators.
They are also exactly the kind of companies now looking toward Texas.
Curaleaf and Trulieve: National Patterns of Risk
Outside Illinois, other large MSOs with designs on national expansion—including into Texas—have compiled their own disturbing records.
Curaleaf has been accused in Oregon of one of the most notorious mislabeling blunders in the industry: selling products advertised as CBD that in fact contained significant THC. The company settled at least ten lawsuits, paid regulatory fines, and endured a license suspension over the incident, then paid an additional $100,000 to resolve a separate class-action suit. More recently, a former regional compliance director has alleged in federal court that Illinois regulators flagged “systemic diversion” at Curaleaf’s Litchfield, Illinois facility, citing vast amounts of unaccounted-for inventory. That combination—dangerously mislabeled products in one state and suspected diversion in another—should alarm any regulator.
Trulieve has become a national case study in how worker-safety failures can turn deadly. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, a 27-year-old employee died after an occupational asthma attack triggered by inhaling ground cannabis dust. OSHA cited the company; Trulieve ultimately settled with a reduced fine after the agency withdrew some of its initial citations. The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission later imposed a $350,000 fine for noncompliance connected to that death. The incident has helped spur new workplace-safety legislation for the cannabis sector in Massachusetts and is widely recognized as the first officially reported occupational asthma death in the U.S. cannabis production industry.
This is the caliber of operator lining up at Texas’s door: companies with histories that include worker fatalities, systemic diversion allegations, pesticide penalties, mislabeling scandals, ethics violations, and repeated efforts to stretch or evade state rules.
DPS has given no public indication that it views any of this as relevant.
How Texas Conservatives Once Understood Good Government
This failure of process would sting less if it did not contradict forty years of Texas conservative doctrine. When I was young—long before I stepped into policy or politics—I absorbed a mantra that shaped Texas Republican identity: government should be run like a business. It was the rallying cry of the era, a promise of efficiency, accountability, transparency, and discipline.
Ross Perot built an entire political movement around this ideal. His charts, his data obsession, his blunt insistence that government should be audited, measured, and forced to justify its decisions—these were the qualities Texans admired because they reflected the sensibilities of a state that expected competence.
Texas governors echoed the theme whenever an agency faltered. Ann Richards invoked business discipline when restructuring TDCJ and modernizing mental health oversight. George W. Bush reorganized agencies around performance metrics and measurable outcomes. Rick Perry spoke frequently about efficiency reforms in workforce development, procurement, and human services. Greg Abbott has demanded data-driven performance from state agencies and has publicly rebuked those that failed to meet clear operational standards.
For decades, Texans were told that government must be transparent, accountable, and grounded in expertise—because those are the principles that guide successful businesses.
DPS has abandoned all of them.
No business evaluates multi-billion-dollar proposals without publishing evaluation criteria. No business refuses to examine the track record of a potential partner. No business exposes its advisors to suspicion by refusing to define their roles. No business hides its scoring methodology from its own stakeholders. And no business treats the past behavior of applicants as irrelevant to future performance.
Ross Perot once said, “If you see a snake, don’t appoint a committee—kill the snake.” DPS is simply refusing to open the box.
An Agency Built to Interdict, Not to Regulate
There is a deeper structural problem. DPS is a law enforcement agency being asked to run a highly technical licensing program for a plant it has spent decades trying to intercept and destroy.
For generations, the mission of Texas DPS has been to stop drug trafficking, enforce criminal statutes, and treat cannabis as contraband. Training, culture, and institutional memory have all reinforced the same bedrock assumption: marijuana is bad, and the people who cultivate, process, or distribute it are on the wrong side of the law. In recent years, federal agencies and some state and local departments have begun to adjust to a world in which cannabis is regulated, taxed, and—in many cases—treated as medicine. DPS has not undergone that transformation. Texas never created a dedicated health or science-oriented cannabis regulator. It simply handed the job to the state’s primary law-enforcement agency and walked away.
At the same time, the Legislature that made this decision is populated by talented people whose backgrounds are in law, business, real estate, entertainment, consulting, and advocacy—not in pharmaceutical manufacturing, lab science, agricultural regulation, or medical program design. Expecting them to build a sophisticated, transparent licensing regime without dedicated subject-matter expertise was unrealistic from the outset.
Layered on top of this design flaw is the predictable gravitational pull of insider dealing that follows every limited-license cannabis program. Wherever a small number of highly valuable licenses are at stake, politically connected players look for an angle. Texas has already seen early evidence of attempted preferential positioning and overlapping business relationships. None of this is surprising. What is surprising is that DPS and legislative leadership chose to build a system that invites suspicion by shrouding the entire process in secrecy.
A law-enforcement agency with a cultural bias against cannabis, operating without true regulatory expertise, following a blueprint written by non-technical policymakers, and administering a closed-door licensing process is not equipped to keep powerful MSOs in check. It is, instead, exactly the kind of environment those companies have learned to exploit.
What a Well-Regulated Licensing System Would Look Like
A sound licensing regime in Texas would start by acknowledging reality: the companies applying for licenses have long, complicated histories, and those histories matter. A competent regulator would publish detailed scoring criteria in advance, explain how out-of-state violations affect eligibility, and specify how issues like mislabeling, potency fraud, OSHA findings, and diversion allegations will be weighed.
It would separate advisors from decision-makers and make both roles visible to the public. It would release redacted versions of applications, publish scores and the reasoning behind them, and provide written explanations to both successful and unsuccessful applicants. It would subject MSOs with heavy violation histories to enhanced oversight once licensed, with regular audits, surprise inspections, and public reporting of compliance events. And it would treat patients, caregivers, and Texas small businesses as stakeholders rather than bystanders.
That is what a serious state does when it confronts national operators with this kind of record.
Texas Cannot Pretend Not to Know Who These Companies Are
The time when Texas could plausibly claim ignorance about MSO misconduct is over. Illinois has documented mislabeling and misclassification schemes tied to major operators. Oregon, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, and other states have issued fines, consent orders, and disciplinary actions that describe in detail how these companies have behaved when they thought no one was looking too closely.
Texas now knows—or should know—that many of the MSOs seeking licenses here have treated rules in other states as obstacles to be navigated rather than standards to be honored. DPS and the Legislature cannot say they believe in running government “like a business” while ignoring the most basic business principle of all: you evaluate a partner by its track record.
If Texas chooses to hand the keys of its medical cannabis program to companies with this history, without transparent standards, without serious scrutiny, and under the supervision of a law-enforcement agency unprepared for the job, the outcome is not hard to predict. It will look like Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Jersey, and every other state that thought it could keep these operators in line without doing the hard work of real regulation.
The harm will not fall on Cresco, Green Thumb, Verano, PharmaCann, Ascend, Curaleaf, or Trulieve. They have already built systems to absorb fines, settle lawsuits, and move on. The harm will fall on Texas patients, Texas workers, and Texas businesses who were told they could trust a program overseen by DPS.
Companies do not reinvent themselves at the Texas border. Their past follows them. The only question now is whether DPS and the Legislature will pretend not to see it—or finally take it seriously enough to protect the people they serve.
For more than fifty years, the federal government has maintained a position about marijuana that almost everyone involved understood to be false. Not unsettled, not ambiguous, but false in the ordinary sense of the word. Since 1970, cannabis has been classified under federal law as a Schedule I controlled substance, a category reserved for drugs deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Heroin sits there. LSD sits there. Marijuana was placed there as a purportedly temporary measure, pending further study.
That study never came.
What followed instead was a long period of institutional pretense. Decades of crime-and-punishment and the warping of society—which supposedly the Founders based on the proposition of being classless and upwardly mobile for everyone. And eventually? States legalized medical marijuana. Doctors recommended it. Patients relied on it. Universities studied it. Courts acknowledged its use. Congress quietly funded research. Federal agencies carved out exceptions and workarounds that allowed cannabis to exist in practice while remaining forbidden in theory. Through all of this, the federal government continued to insist—on paper—that marijuana had no accepted medical use.
The lie persisted not because it was persuasive, but because abandoning it would have required admitting that an entire regulatory and enforcement architecture rested on a premise everyone knew was untrue.
To understand why that admission took half a century, it helps to return to the moment the lie was chosen deliberately.
By the time Richard Nixon took office, the promise of the civil-rights era was already unraveling. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did more than remove a moral leader; it marked the point at which the federal government’s commitment to racial justice felt to many as though it receded from urgency into abstraction. No justice, no peace, cities burned, Black men wore their anger along with their black berets, black gloves and the arms our Constitution gave us an inalienable to carry for self defense—for the very first time in inescapable confrontational terms demanding justice and equality—and looking back, maybe the default decision by the “Silent Majority “ of White Americans to criminalize as many of these things as possible because fear and loathing are the natural first reaction to riots but the ability to empathize and act on that empathy by hearing and seeing and making things right—yeah, that was never gonna happen. Millions of hijacked amygdalas chose the tough talking authoritarian as a substitute for thinking and taking accountability. So, what followed was not reconciliation, but reaction. The language of reform gave way to the language of control. Equality was replaced with order.
“Law and order” was not a neutral governing philosophy. It was a reactionary response to social change, deployed to reassure a frightened majority that the upheavals of the 1960s would be contained. Nixon understood this, and he understood who would pay the price. In private conversations, he acknowledged that marijuana was “not particularly dangerous” and that the scientific case against it was weak. His concern was not public health. It was symbolism.
Marijuana had become associated—politically and culturally—with groups Nixon viewed as destabilizing: young people, antiwar activists, Black Americans, and other minorities already framed as threats to social order. Criminalizing cannabis at the highest level of federal law provided a tool that could be applied broadly, selectively, and with devastating effect. It allowed the state to exert control without formally repudiating the civil-rights commitments it had just made.
When Nixon appointed the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, the Shafer Commission, he did so knowing the evidence was unlikely to support harsh criminalization. When the commission reported back in 1972, it confirmed precisely that. Marijuana did not warrant its treatment under federal law. Decriminalization was the rational course.
Nixon did not dispute the findings. He did not rebut the science. He ignored the report.
The decision to keep marijuana in Schedule I was not a misunderstanding; it was a choice. Nixon believed that moving marijuana would send “the wrong signal” at a moment when his administration was invested in reasserting authority. Law-and-order politics required visible enforcement and blunt tools. The War on Drugs supplied both. What followed was not subtle. It was blunt-force trauma as policy—aggressive policing, prosecutorial overreach, mass incarceration, and the degradations that fell predictably on the same communities the civil-rights movement had sought to protect.
The foundational lie—that marijuana had no accepted medical use—provided moral cover. Over time, that expedient falsehood hardened into doctrine. Administrations changed. Evidence accumulated. States adapted. Courts worked around it. Yet the classification remained, repeated long after belief in it had vanished.
This is where the analogy to Chernobyl becomes unavoidable.
By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union was already operating inside a closed informational system. Official narratives bore little relationship to reality, but the system persisted because accuracy mattered less than conformity. Bad news was softened as it moved upward. Problems were tolerated as long as they could be managed on paper. The system functioned not because it was honest, but because honesty had become dangerous.
When Reactor No. 4 failed, the instinct was not to confront the truth, but to preserve the narrative. Engineers hesitated. Officials delayed. Ministries reassured superiors that everything was under control. Radiation spread anyway. What ultimately destabilized the system was not the explosion alone, but the revelation that the state had organized itself in such a way that telling the truth posed a greater risk than continuing to lie.
Federal marijuana policy followed the same structural logic, if at far lower human cost. The insistence that cannabis had no accepted medical use survived long after it ceased to convince doctors, patients, researchers, judges, or regulators. The system adapted not by correcting the falsehood, but by building increasingly elaborate workarounds around it. Enforcement became selective. Research was constrained. Tax policy became punitive to the point of absurdity. Banking and payment systems warped around legal fiction.
For a time, the damage was containable because it was diffuse. It affected particular industries, particular states, particular people. The broader system absorbed the stress.
Rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III marks the moment when that containment strategy fails. The gap between what the law said and what the world demonstrated grew too large to manage through euphemism and exception. Continuing to insist that cannabis had no accepted medical use began to impose greater institutional risk than abandoning the claim. Like radiation readings that could no longer be ignored, the consequences of the lie became measurable and undeniable.
This is not legalization. It is not absolution. It is the federal government quietly conceding that it can no longer maintain a position everyone knows is untrue.
History rarely turns on dramatic confessions. More often, it shifts when institutions admit—without ceremony—that denial has become more dangerous than truth. Chernobyl marked that moment for a system built on managed reality. Federal marijuana rescheduling, if it occurs, will be remembered the same way: not as the end of prohibition, but as the moment when the lie finally escaped containment.
Inside DPS’s High-Risk Bet on Nine MSOs—and Why the Industry Pushed Back
Texas has quietly crossed a threshold that will define the future of its medical cannabis program—and possibly its broader cannabis policy—for years to come.
On December 2, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced that nine multistate operators (MSOs) had been conditionally selected to move forward in the expansion of the Texas Compassionate Use Program (TCUP). Those companies are now advancing through a due-diligence phase that, had it been applied properly from the beginning, might have prevented many of the red flags now troubling regulators, lawmakers, and the industry.
The nine conditionally selected MSOs are:
Verano Texas, LLC
Trulieve TX, Inc.
Texas Patient Access, LLC
Lonestar Compassionate Care Group, LLC
Lone Star Bioscience, Inc.
PC TX OPCO LLC (PharmaCann)
Texa OP dba TexaRx
Story of Texas, LLC
Dilatso, LLC
These selections mark the most aggressive structural shift in Texas medical cannabis since the program’s creation. But the way DPS handled the first phase of licensing raised immediate concern—because much of the verification that should have preceded these awards did not occur until after public scrutiny forced it.
TEACUP Licensing: What DPS Did—What It Missed—and What It Was Forced to Fix
In Phase I of the TEACUP selection process, DPS advanced nine MSOs based largely on self-reported applications—business plans, organizational charts, security narratives, and financial projections—without publicly demonstrating that it had independently verified:
Long-term financial stability
Federal tax exposure under IRS §280E
True capitalization and debt structure
Corporate ownership
Or meaningful out-of-state compliance histories
Even more troubling, several applicants did not appear to have active, properly registered Texas business entities at the time of application—a deficiency that would normally be considered a baseline operational requirement for doing business in the state.
Only after the initial awards were made did DPS announce that the nine MSOs would now be subject to “additional due diligence”—including reviews of disciplinary history, litigation, and financial suitability.
That sequence matters. It briefly reversed the logic of licensing itself. Instead of verify first, select second, Texas drifted into select first, verify later.
What Changed—and Why
This story was first broken by Blazed News under the byline of Jay Maguire, Political Editor of Blazed News, detailing the structural deficiencies in the TEACUP licensing process—specifically the lack of front-end financial verification, tax exposure analysis, and meaningful compliance vetting.
That reporting was subsequently picked up by the Dallas Morning News, bringing mainstream scrutiny to a process that, until then, had unfolded largely outside public view. DPS altered its trajectory literally the same day as that coverage, announcing that the nine MSO selections would now be subject to formal additional due diligence before any final licenses would be issued.
The timing was not coincidental. It stands as a clear example of what happens when good advocacy and serious reporting intersect: the public gets better answers, regulators get sharper questions, and policy changes in real time.
Tomorrow’s Hearings: The Rules That Will Decide What Texas Cannabis Looks Like for the Next Decade
While TEACUP licensing has drawn headlines, an equally consequential regulatory fight is unfolding in parallel.
Tomorrow, both the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) will hold public hearings on proposed rules that will reshape the regulatory structure for consumable hemp and THC-containing products statewide.
These hearings represent the first serious attempt to impose uniform, enforceable standards on a market that has operated for years on inconsistent lab practices, unverifiable COAs, and frontline officers forced to guess legality in the field.
Mandatory 21+ Age Verification—With Enforcement Power
Both agencies are moving to lock in a 21-and-up age requirement for consumable hemp and THC products. Emergency rules already exist, but the hearings determine:
Who must verify IDs
What qualifies as acceptable ID
What systems retailers must use
And what penalties attach to violations
TABC now has the authority to suspend or revoke alcohol permits for violations. DSHS holds parallel power over hemp retailers. For the first time, Texas is treating THC age enforcement with the seriousness of alcohol and tobacco law.
Lab Testing & COA Standards—The Most Overdue Reform in Texas Cannabis
For years, Texas has suffered under a broken enforcement contradiction:
Labs use different methods
COAs vary wildly in format and credibility
Officers cannot verify legality in the field
And courts struggle to rely on inconsistent test data
The hearings offer the first real chance to impose:
Standardized testing protocols
Uniform lab accreditation requirements
Defined COA formats
Mandatory data retention
And enforceable verification standards
Without these reforms, Texas remains trapped in guesswork enforcement.
Enforcement Architecture: Who Survives This Market
The rules under consideration also establish penalty structures that include:
Administrative fines
License suspensions
Permit revocation
And permanent market exclusion
For many businesses already barely surviving regulatory uncertainty, these rules will determine who adapts—and who disappears.
Yet even with stronger age gates and lab requirements, Texas still lacks a state-run system to guarantee the authenticity of COAs or track chain-of-custody between lab, distributor, and retailer.
That missing piece is exactly where CRAFT enters the picture.
Why CRAFT Exists—and Who Actually Founded It
CRAFT—the Cannabis Retailers Alliance for Texas—was co-founded by Rhiannon Yard, owner of Hemp Gaia in Waco, Texas, and Jay Maguire, Political Editor of Blazed News and Executive Director of the Texas Hemp Federation.
This matters, because CRAFT did not emerge from a political campaign or a corporate boardroom—it emerged from the front-line compliance battles that defined the first years of the Texas hemp industry.
Under Jay Maguire’s leadership, the Texas Hemp Federation played a central role in defending the legality of hemp products during the industry’s earliest and most fragile years, including the litigation that produced the Sky Marketing injunction—the ruling that preserved the legality of smokable hemp and effectively kept the Texas hemp market alive when state regulators attempted to shut it down.
CRAFT was built as the next-generation infrastructure layer on top of those legal victories—not as a slogan, but as a technical compliance solution to the problems that litigation alone cannot solve.
And a framework for safe-harbor immunity for good-faith retailers and consumers
The goal is strictly evidentiary, not ideological:
To make truth provable at the point of sale, not litigated months later after businesses are seized, employees are arrested, and families are financially destroyed.
CRAFT’s proposal will soon be headed to the Governor’s office, outlining a framework that includes:
Product-level verification
Mandatory lab-result authentication
Chain-of-custody transparency
Immunity for innocent retailers and consumers acting in good faith
And a regulatory level-set grounded in proof, not presumption
CRAFT exists because Texas finally reached the limit of what lawsuits can protect—and entered the phase where infrastructure must replace injunctions.
The Bigger Pattern
Texas once again stands at a familiar crossroads:
Let big money move first—or let verification come first.
If “licensed” does not mean “verified,” the market will fracture.
If “approved” does not mean “audited,” the program will destabilize.
And if due diligence only happens after exposure, public trust will not survive the next collapse.
The Question Texas Still Hasn’t Answered
The uncomfortable truth is this: Texas did not arrive at this moment because the system worked—it arrived here because the system was forced to correct itself after being exposed. Nine MSOs were advanced before the public ever saw proof of financial stability, tax integrity, corporate legitimacy, or clean compliance histories. Only after scrutiny did the state pivot to “additional due diligence.” That is not proactive regulation. That is damage control.
If even one of these operators collapses under tax exposure, litigation, compliance failure, or capital stress, the consequences will not fall on DPS executives or political appointees. They will fall on patients who lose access, retailers who lose inventory, employees who lose jobs, and communities that trusted the word “licensed.”
Texas still has time to prove that this expansion will be governed by verification instead of influence, by audit instead of assumption, and by proof instead of press releases.
But that window is closing fast.
And when the next failure comes, the only real question won’t be who broke the story.
Another harvest season is officially behind us, and for growers across the state, this is where the real work begins. People love talking about planting, feeding, and flushing—but drying and curing is where flower becomes medicine, and where a lot of good work can go sideways fast if you aren’t intentional.
Right now, tons of outdoor crops are being chopped, hung, and prepped for processing. That means one thing: every grower is about to get a crash course in environmental control. Drying isn’t just hanging plants in a room and waiting. It’s about managing temperature, humidity, airflow, cleanliness, and consistency day after day. A clean, dedicated drying space is non-negotiable—dust, dirt, or bad airflow can ruin a harvest just as quickly as mildew or over-drying can.
Dialing in your environment is half art, half science. Too dry and your flower loses its soul—terps evaporate, buds get crunchy, and potency drops. Too wet and you invite mold. If you’ve ever opened a bin and smelled that ammonia funk, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This is why having control—real control—over your space is the difference between mids and magic.
Then comes the cure, the most misunderstood step in the entire process. Curing is where chlorophyll breaks down, terpenes stabilize, and the flower finds its personality. It’s a make-or-break moment. A rushed cure can tank an otherwise beautiful crop. A patient cure, done right, can elevate an average one. It’s the quiet part of the craft that defines the final smoke.
Amid all this, a lot of folks are stressing about the latest federal legislation. My message? Stay chill. Theres approximately 12 months to prepare for “What-Ifs”. Historically, cannabis prohibition has followed almost the exact same path alcohol went through. The tension, the overreactions, the patchwork rules, the political theater—it all mirrors what happened right before the 21st Amendment. We’re watching the same movie, just with different characters. And just like last time, the market will settle, real regulation will emerge, and we’ll be better off for it.
We’ve got a year—maybe even more—before anything dramatic happens but now is the time to ensure relationships are solid and options are explored. So keep your head down, keep your room clean, cure slow, and stay steady. Quality always wins.
Texas is taking meaningful steps to strengthen the Texas Compassionate Use Program following
the passage of HB 46. New qualifying conditions like chronic pain, traumatic brain injury,
Crohn’s disease, and hospice care are now in effect, and DSHS has adopted rules for approving
inhalation devices and allowing physicians to recommend additional conditions for future
legislative consideration.
The big new this week is the licensing of nine new businesses, expanding the number of
operators from three to twelve, with three more expected by April. With criteria
slanted toward large multi-state companies, Texas companies hardly stood a chance. Here are the newly licensed businesses:
Verano Texas, LLC Lonestar Compassionate Care Group, LLC TexaRx Trulieve TX, Inc Lone Star Bioscience, Inc Story of Texas. LLC Texas Patient Access, LLC PharmaCann Dalitso, LLC
Note: These are conditional licenses subject to additional due diligence evaluations
such as disciplinary actions, financial suitability, litigation history, and any
other information as required by the Department following Phase I of the
selection process.
Once officially approved, in addition to their primary location, these businesses
will also be able to open satellite locations, improving patient access
across the state.
While we appreciate progress, after 10 long years of advocacy, TCUP still has
substantial room for improvement. Whole-plant cannabis remains unavailable
and patient protections remain weak in areas like employment, parental rights,
probation, and firearms. High fees and rigid criteria continue to limit
opportunities for small businesses, making it difficult for Texas-based
applicants to compete in the current licensing structure.
It’s clear that meaningful work remains if we want a Compassionate Use Program
that is truly accessible, fair, and responsive to the needs of patients.
We’ll be digging into these issues and discussing solutions at the Texas
Cannabis Policy Conference, January 29–31 in Austin.
Registration is now open: https://texascannabisconference.org/registration
Read more below about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Toward Liberty,
Heather Fazio
Texas Cannabis Policy Center
www.TexasCannabisPolicy.org
www.TexasCannabisConference.org
The film, directed by Dan Farah, centers on the claim — laid out by 34 former government, military, and intelligence-community insiders — that non-human intelligence has visited Earth, that there’s been a decades-long cover-up, and possibly a secret “reverse-engineering” of alien tech by world powers.
It argues that these insiders, some high-ranking, have chosen to speak out, asserting that “the situation is real,” and that UAPs (formerly UFOs) are not merely aerial oddities, but part of a much larger — and deeply classified — phenomenon.
So from the get-go, Disclosure casts itself less as a speculative film and more as a whistleblower-driven exposé of a “secret history.”
What It Does Well
Polished production & strong narrative framing — The documentary doesn’t feel like a rough Internet conspiracy video; it’s slick, cinematic, and well-paced. Editors and production value give it a gravitas rarely seen in UFO documentaries.
Credible-sounding testimony — For those inclined to believe in UAP disclosure, hearing former insiders speak, off-the-record but on-camera, adds weight. The film leans heavily into this ethos: “real people with real security-clearance history,” not random paranormal enthusiasts.
Compelling urgency & gravity — By tying the claims to national security, advanced technology reverse-engineering, and geopolitics, the film doesn’t treat UAPs as fringe sci-fi fluff. Instead it frames them as potential world-changing events, demanding serious attention.
If you’re someone drawn to the possibility that the world is hiding bigger truths — which I know fits your wheelhouse — there’s a strong emotional and intellectual punch to what this film delivers.
What Doesn’t Quite Land — And What You Should Watch With a Critical Eye
First Contact
No verifiable “smoking gun” evidence — The film relies almost entirely on testimony and hearsay. No new public physical evidence (e.g. recoverable alien artifacts, verifiable bodies) is presented. For many skeptics and for the archival record, testimony alone will fall short.
No on-screen dissent / peer-reviewed counterpoints — The documentary plays more like a prosecutorial case than an objective investigation; you won’t find scientists or skeptics in opposition, asking critical questions. That omission — intentional or not — undermines the film’s claim to objectivity.
Heavy reliance on reputation and secrecy as evidence — Much of the film’s “proof” is that someone with a clearance and résumé says “trust me, I saw it/heard it.” That’s always a gamble — especially with topics historically steeped in disinformation, propaganda, and secrecy ops.
It may feel more like a call to belief than a rigorous documentary — For viewers who demand corroborated facts and replicable evidence, the film might come off as persuasive fiction dressed as documentary.
Conclusion: Worth Watching — But Don’t Sign Anything
If you’re wired like I am, always probing for angles that Big Media ignores — this documentary is absolutely worth your time. It’s one of the more polished, high-profile, and insider-heavy UFO / UAP docs released recently, and the emotional narrative plus the geopolitical framing give it a cinematic punch.
But treat it as a provocative conversation starter — not a definitive revelation.
The lack of publicly verifiable evidence means you’ll probably leave with more questions than answers.
A Cautionary Tale of Federal Taxes and Recreational Lobbying
Originally passed by the Texas Legislature and signed by Governor Abbott in 2015, the Texas Compassionate Use Program was structured with the intent of a “right to try” limited program. Similar to other state medical cannabis programs, the intent was to allow patients with a handful of qualifying conditions, such as epilepsy or cancer, to “try” an alternative substance – strictly under physician supervision. Oversight of this program was given to the Texas Department of Public Safety, to ensure proper regulations were enacted and enforced. To be clear, the Texas Compassionate Use Program is not a recreational marijuana program.
The Department of Public Safety is currently holding an open RFP to expand the number of licensed organizations allowed to participate in the program to facilitate stronger patient access under House Bill 46. A wide array of applicants are expected to apply, including not only Texas based medical operators, but also multi-state operators (“MSOs”) located outside of Texas – many of which trade on Canadian exchanges and distribute recreational marijuana across various foreign and domestic markets. Texas DPS should be wary – inviting such MSOs, or their affiliated entities (“Affiliates”), into the Compassionate Use Program will set the stage for a strong push toward a recreational marijuana market in the State of Texas.
Florida Market: Recreational Foresight
The State of Florida provides a perfect case study. Initially signed into law by Governor Rick Scott in 2014, the Florida medical market has grown in leaps and bounds. Estimated reports show that in 2024, the medical market surpassed $2B in gross annual sales, making Florida one of the largest medical markets in the country. But this has not been enough. Since 2019, a gang of MSOs have continuously pressured the market to become recreational, with the intent of rivaling the California recreational market of today.
Most recently, this effort was defeated in November 2024 by Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Freedom Fund PAC. At the time, MSOs had spent over $150M on the rec campaign. The primary supporter of this campaign, Trulieve LLC (Tallahassee, FL), even sued the Republican Party of Florida itself in October 2024, claiming that the FL GOP published material intended to convince Florida voters to vote against a measure that would “…legalize the recreational use of cannabis in Florida…”. Trulieve has been one of the largest domestic MSOs in the United States since its late 2021 acquisition of Harvest Health & Recreation, a recreational company out of Phoenix, AZ. Select leadership of Harvest has since started a new recreational MSO – Story Cannabis Co.
A review of the Florida Division of Election’s contribution records for the Make It Legal Florida PAC and the Smart & Safe Florida PAC shows the breakdown of capital donated to turn Florida recreational.
Compare these donations to the expenses incurred by Las Vegas Sands in its attempt to bring gambling to the State of Texas. According to Texas Monthly, Las Vegas Sands spent roughly $13 million between January 2024 and July 2025, spread across over one hundred different lobbyists, to push their agenda. Imagine what out-of-state MSOs, both foreign and domestic, are willing to spend to bring recreational marijuana to Texas.
Federal Legalization
Perhaps equally as concerning as efforts to turn red states into recreational marijuana meccas are the efforts being made at the federal level. Led by MSOs and Canadian operators, efforts to reschedule or legalize marijuana use continue through a dizzying array of efforts, including spending millions on lobbying and various lawsuits across the federal government.
As an example, the lawsuit filed against the United States Attorney General by certain parties (including the Chicago MSO Verano Holdings Corp.) in October 2023, which claimed that cannabis prohibition in state markets was unconstitutional. A press release for the lawsuit lists several “foundational supporters”, including Green Thumb Industries (Chicago, IL), Ascend Wellness (Morristown, NJ) and TerrAscend (Ontario, CAN). The case was dismissed by a federal district judge in July 2024.
Federal Taxes & 280E
Despite all such efforts, marijuana remains a Schedule I substance in the United States. The question is then asked “If cannabis is federally illegal, why is the federal government not shutting down all state licensed cannabis companies?”. This is because of the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment (previously the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment), which has been adopted every year since 2014. This amendment prohibits the Justice Department from spending funds to interfere with state medical cannabis programs. Note: This amendment only applies to state medical programs – not recreational programs. Out-of-state MSOs operating in recreational markets with the perception of nigh impunity continue to do so at the risk of DOJ enforcement.
Notably, this exception for state medical cannabis operators only affects USDOJ enforcement and does NOT extend to the mandatory payment of federal taxes under the purview of the IRS. Since the case of Edmondson v. Commission (1981) which considered whether or not an amphetamine, cocaine, and cannabis dealer could deduct business expenses, the IRS has enforced IRC Section 280E. Section 280E stipulates that any business that trafficks in controlled substances prohibited by federal law is not allowed to deduct business expenses from its federal taxes. This policy has stringently applied to the entirety of the marijuana industry (both medical and recreational) and has been enunciated as such by the IRS as recent as its IR-2024-177 announcement on June 28, 2024, stating “…the Internal Revenue Service today reminded taxpayers that marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance and is subject to the limitations of Internal Revenue Code…Section 280E disallows all deductions or credits for any amount paid or incurred in carrying on any trade or business that consists of illegally trafficking in a Schedule I or II controlled substance within the meaning of the federal Controlled Substances Act. This applies to businesses that sell marijuana, even if they operate in states that have legalized the sale of marijuana…”. As Benjamin Franklin would say “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”.
Unfortunately, it would seem that Benjamin Franklin did not consider out-of-state marijuana companies when he made this statement. To showcase this, one needs to look no further than the reported billions in accrued federal taxes owed by publicly traded MSOs, most of whom have publicly announced their intent to disregard the official position of the Internal Revenue Service. Consider Curaleaf Holdings, a leading international MSO founded by Boris Jordan (past CEO of Gazprom Media and founder of the Sputnik Group), which counts the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich as an original investor. As stated in their Q2 2024 filing: “As of June 30, 2024, the Company has adopted a new federal and state income tax position, asserting that the restrictions of Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code (“Section 280E”) do not apply to the Company’s cannabis operations”. Instead, such companies have implemented terms, such as “uncertain tax liabilities” or “deferred tax liabilities” to separate out federal taxes on the balance sheet and present a certain financial picture.
An abridged list of similar companies is provided below.
State Market Reaction
Medical cannabis markets have started to notice. The State of Alabama conducted a similar RFP to that as the State of Texas back in late 2022, with the intent of issuing licenses in Summer 2023. Administered by the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (“AMCC”), the option was provided to have all applicants evaluated by a third-party agent, but the AMCC reserved the right to “…act independently of any third-party evaluation…” and award licenses at their discretion.
In June 2023, an article was published in the Alabama Political Reporter (APR) “Questions Surround Medical Cannabis Scoring: No. 1 Reportedly Owed $150 Million to IRS”. In the article, APR writes that Verano Holdings Corp. had “…$161.4 million owed to the IRS compared with its $92.8 million cash on hand – meaning it owes 78 percent more in taxes that it had in cash at the end of its second quarter…”. The article goes on to quote Verano leadership as having stated that “The cost of penalties and interest for this are significantly below the available cost of debt”. This means that Verano consciously decided that not paying federal taxes was cheaper than raising more debt. Despite receiving a high score from third-party agents, Verano was not awarded a license in the most recent licensing round conducted by the AMCC. The company has since doubled down with a tax approach similar to that of Curaleaf, stating in its Q4 2024 call earnings presentation that “From a tax perspective consistent with many of our peers, we’ve taken a position that we do not owe taxes attributable to the application of Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code.” The Q3 2025 report for Verano now reports projected federal tax liabilities of approximately $419.2MM (summation of $14.3MM in “Income tax payable”, $333.907MM in “Uncertain tax positions” and $71.023MM in “Deferred income taxes”).
Equally as disturbing is the crushing debt owned by such companies. State medical markets seek ownership information from applicants to analyze qualifications, as well as to take preemptive measures against future diversion and criminal involvement. Such a measure appears somewhat futile if a third-party debtor, removed from such analysis, could potentially call such debt in the near future.
This is no new development. In recent years, multiple MSOs have shuttered or been reorganized due to debt, including AYR Wellness, which in July 2025 declared it was entering into a Restructuring Support Agreement, having owed roughly $622.0MM to outside parties at the time (see MJBizDaily article “Debt-saddled Marijuana MSO Ayr Wellness to Sell Off Assets, ‘Wind Down Operations’ , and MedMen, the OG cautionary tale of cannabis collapses, which in April 2024 declared bankruptcy, having owed roughly $411.0MM to outside parties at the time.
Texas Compassionate Use Program
Thankfully, the leadership at TXDPS Regulatory Services Division (“RSD”) already appears to be aware of many of these issues. A review of the FAQs published by the department instructs applicants to “…report any outstanding state or federal tax liabilities or debt obligations…” when describing the financial situation of the company. Although the State of Texas has no income tax, it does have similar tax laws (such as regarding franchise taxes), under Texas Tax Code, which applies to companies and their “affiliated groups” or parent companies. Willful nonpayment of such constitutes a felony under Texas Penal Code Chapter 71. And Rule §12.3 of the Compassionate Use Program already stipulates offenses under which any individual can be deemed unfit for participation in the program, while also stating that “…the department may find that an offense not described in this subsection also renders an individual unfit…” for participation.
The Alabama scenario does provide an interesting issue with competitive RFPs, especially those that pertain to controlled substances and subsequent evaluation of applicants. The intent of a statewide RFP, such as that for the Compassionate Use Program, is to solicit applicants that will best serve the purposes of the program in question – but beyond the rose-colored picture provided by applicants, how is an agency expected to receive the full picture? It is unlikely that companies and their Affiliates applying to the Compassionate Use Program would openly declare their aggressive positions on recreational marijuana or deferred taxes to the statewide law enforcement agency of the State of Texas that is responsible for protecting Texas communities and citizens from cartels and organized crime.
It is even less likely that the same applicants will provide evaluators sufficient information to ascertain between (a) true Texas based companies, (b) MSOs and (c) the various other applicant entities (“Affiliates”) that are already affiliated with active MSOs as well – such affiliates are typically identified as having current or ex-MSO leadership on their team, or private leadership with a catch and release history of securing state licenses, only to offload to an MSO in the imminent future. Possible examples would be Texas Patients Group, LLC, RNF Texas, LLC, and Lonestar Compassionate Care Group, LLC, each showing TXSOS management persons that appear to have the same names as current or ex-MSO leadership at Curaleaf Holdings Inc. (Samford, CT), MariMed Inc. (Norwood, MA), and Green Thumb Industries Inc. (Chicago, IL) respectively. Such a strategy can be used to backdoor publicly traded MSOs into states that wish to avoid recreational lobbying and work with local interests. Should the RSD therefore consider allowing public comments on the application process?
The Texas Compassionate Use Program is not a recreational program – and Texas is not a recreational marijuana state. This state embraces law and order, a position firmly taken by our Governor, our Lt. Governor and our State Legislature. TXDPS should be wary of foreign and domestic MSOs, as well as their Affiliates, to mitigate bad actors and ensure this great state can continue to protect our communities. Let’s make sure Texas stays Texas.
As Congress stumbles into another government shutdown standoff, the real casualties aren’t just federal employees or political reputations — it’s America’s $30+ billion hemp industry and the millions of workers, farmers, and small business owners who depend on it.
At the center of the chaos is a single paragraph buried in the new federal spending proposal — language pushed by Democrats that would redefine hemp in the upcoming 2025 Farm Bill, effectively giving the DEA new authority to restrict or criminalize hemp-derived cannabinoids like Delta-8, Delta-10, and HHC.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, once hailed as the “godfather” of U.S. hemp legalization for shepherding the 2018 Farm Bill, now finds himself in the middle of a bitter political tug-of-war. He and other senior Republicans refuse to pass the Democrats’ version of the funding bill unless that hemp language is removed. Meanwhile, Democrats argue the loophole has fueled an unregulated “gray market” of psychoactive hemp products they say must be closed.
The Industry in Limbo
While Washington plays politics, the U.S. hemp economy — valued at over $30 billion annually — is effectively being held hostage. Retailers can’t plan ahead. Farmers are halting harvests. Processors and distributors face stalled payments and regulatory uncertainty.
“It’s the same story we saw in Texas earlier this year,” one industry advocate told Blaze News. “Politicians who don’t understand hemp chemistry are trying to legislate it out of existence. And while they argue, our businesses bleed.”
This political paralysis couldn’t come at a worse time. The hemp sector has become one of the fastest-growing agricultural and retail markets in America, creating thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenue. Now, amid the federal shutdown, small hemp shops and wholesalers are losing access to SBA support, USDA programs, and even mail-based commerce — all while Washington debates what hemp is.
The Definition Fight
At stake is the definition of hemp itself.
Since 2018, federal law has defined hemp as cannabis with less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis. But the explosion of minor cannabinoids — chemically derived from legal hemp — has lawmakers panicking. The proposed new definition would outlaw most hemp-derived THC products, reshaping the entire industry overnight.
McConnell and several Republican allies have quietly sided with farm-state senators to block the redefinition, while progressive Democrats and anti-cannabis conservatives form an unlikely coalition demanding tighter control.
Americans Pay the Price
While D.C. bickers, everyday Americans are paying the price. Veterans waiting on benefits, families missing child tax credits, and government workers sent home without paychecks are now joined by an unexpected group — hemp farmers and entrepreneurs — who find their livelihoods trapped in the crossfire of partisan politics.
This isn’t just a shutdown. It’s a showdown over hemp’s future in America.
The Bottom Line
If Congress doesn’t resolve the shutdown soon — and the hemp language remains in dispute — the ripple effect will devastate a sector that’s already endured state bans, inconsistent regulation, and banking discrimination.
Once again, it’s Main Street — not Washington — that will feel the burn.
The Quiet Majority Has Spoken—Now It’s Time to Act Like It
Texans are not confused about hemp. They’re tired of chaos. Poll after poll shows most voters—Democrats, Republicans, rural, suburban, and urban alike—support legal hemp and cannabis when framed around order, safety, and responsibility. They don’t want bans; they want boundaries.
Yet for three sessions, a loud minority has controlled the narrative through fear. They talk about “protecting kids,” while ignoring that regulation—not prohibition—is what actually protects them. That’s the paradox of Texas hemp politics: the prohibitionists have passion, the reformers have numbers—but numbers don’t matter if they’re quiet.
This week’s Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission stakeholder meeting is our chance to flip the script.
The TABC Rules: A Baseline, Not a Ceiling
Governor Abbott’s Executive Order GA-56 set a clear standard: no sales of consumable hemp products to anyone under 21, and mandatory ID verification for all transactions. Simple. Clear. Enforceable.
But clarity without capability is a setup for failure. That’s why CRAFT—the Cannabis Retailers Alliance for Texas—proposes something beyond compliance: a model for aggressive, auditable self-regulation.
In our submission to TABC, we laid out a framework to make age-gating foolproof . Every certified 21+ retailer would use electronic ID scanning tied to point-of-sale systems that physically block hemp product SKUs until an ID passes verification. Every clerk would be trained and tested. Every store would face quarterly “mystery shops” and real-time compliance audits through an open portal. Every fake ID, every failed attempt, every disciplinary action would be logged within 24 hours and summarized monthly for regulators.
This isn’t optional compliance theater—it’s an industry-run firewall against under-21 access, designed to complement state enforcement rather than dodge it.
Our message to TABC is simple: trust, but verify—and we’ll give you the data to do it.
The Real Problem: Counterfeits, Chaos, and Criminals in Disguise
Let’s be honest about the elephant in the dispensary.
Texas’ hemp marketplace has been flooded with counterfeit, mislabeled, and untested “hemp” lookalikesmasquerading as legitimate products. They’re made in unsanitary facilities, imported in bulk, and sold in corner stores with no quality controls, no lab reports, and no idea what’s actually inside.
We’ve seen so-called “THCA” gummies test positive for fentanyl analogues and synthetic cannabinoids. We’ve seen gas station “vapes” with no QR codes or fake Certificates of Analysis—just cheap packaging mimicking legitimate brands. Some products are flat-out counterfeits of reputable companies’ SKUs, complete with stolen COAs.
This isn’t the hemp industry. It’s the black market in drag.
When parents, sheriffs, and senators see these products, they think “hemp.” And that’s what fuels prohibition. Every unregulated fake product becomes another talking point for Dan Patrick and Charles Perry. Every child harmed by a bootleg “delta” cartridge becomes a soundbite on the evening news.
That’s why CRAFT’s certification and audit system matters. It draws a bright line between legitimate, accountable businesses and the parasites pretending to be part of our sector.
If we don’t regulate ourselves—and fast—Texas will regulate us out of existence.
Regulation as Reassurance
In my political analysis, I wrote that Texans aren’t demanding bans—they’re demanding reassurance . They don’t oppose cannabinoids; they oppose confusion.
When asked whether the legislature should “ban hemp-THC to protect children,” a narrow majority agrees. When told it means shutting down small businesses and killing jobs, support collapses. The difference isn’t ideology—it’s trust.
CRAFT’s model builds that trust through proof.
Proof that every sale is age-gated.
Proof that every product is tested and traceable.
Proof that when something goes wrong, it’s caught and corrected—not covered up.
Texans respond to visible responsibility, not slogans. They want to see rules, oversight, and accountability.
The Political Battlefield: Intensity Over Ideology
Inside the Texas GOP, the divide is nearly even: 45% oppose bans, 35% support them, and the rest shrug . The prohibitionists may be smaller, but they’re louder and more disciplined. They show up. They dominate hearings. They frame the story.
Our side? We’re running businesses, paying taxes, and raising families—but if we don’t match that intensity, we’ll keep losing policy to panic.
The winning message isn’t “freedom” or “choice.” It’s safety, order, and discipline. CRAFT’s self-regulation model gives lawmakers something to point to—a system that actually works.
The Way Forward
If TABC adopts these rules and recognizes certification as a “best practice,” we can create a statewide framework that separates real hemp from the knockoffs. Within 90 days, we’ll have hundreds of certified stores publishing compliance dashboards that regulators can access at any time.
This will make Texas the national leader in responsible hemp governance—a market that doesn’t wait for Washington or Austin to tell it how to behave.
Because the truth is, Texas doesn’t need another ban—it needs proof that good actors can self-govern.
The Closing Argument
We’ve let the loudest voices define us for too long. It’s time to take back the narrative.
The prohibitionists claim chaos. We’ll show order. They claim danger. We’ll show safety. They claim lawlessness. We’ll show data.
The counterfeiters and impostors have had their run. Now it’s time for the professionals to lead.
Texas hemp can’t survive as a gray-market punchline. It must evolve into a certified, audited, and transparent industry. That’s what Texans expect—and it’s what will finally end the cycle of moral panic and legislative overreach.
Texas regulators have once again shifted the ground beneath the state’s hemp industry. On September 23, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) issued an emergency rule barring the sale of consumable hemp products to anyone under twenty-one. The rule took effect immediately, but enforcement will not begin until October 1, leaving retailers scarcely a week to adapt. For shop owners, that means updating signage, retraining staff, and putting new compliance systems in place at breakneck speed.
The language of the rule is blunt. Any TABC license or permit holder who also holds the Department of State Health Services’ consumable hemp registration is now prohibited from selling or delivering hemp products of any kind to customers younger than twenty-one. A valid, government-issued ID must be checked at the point of sale, and failure to do so can result in the most severe penalty the agency has at its disposal: cancellation of the license. TABC officials did carve out a narrow safe harbor—if a seller examines an ID in good faith, the customer misrepresents their age, and the seller reasonably believes the buyer to be over twenty-one, then the retailer is shielded from punishment.
For the industry, this is not a minor adjustment but a dramatic escalation. One Austin retailer told Blazed News, “They’ve moved the goalposts again—and if we screw up once, they can take our license away. No fines. No warnings. Straight to cancellation.” Many stores already card their customers, but the stakes of a mistake have never been higher. A single lapse could shut down a business that has otherwise followed the law.
The rule flows directly from Governor Greg Abbott’s Executive Order GA-56, which called for tougher restrictions on hemp and THC products under the banner of protecting youth. By invoking its broad authority under the Alcoholic Beverage Code—particularly provisions allowing cancellation for conduct deemed harmful to public health and safety—TABC has given Abbott his first concrete enforcement action since the order was issued earlier this month.
The practical impact will be felt immediately. Shops that once counted younger adults among their customer base are bracing for a revenue hit, with some estimating that ten to fifteen percent of sales could disappear overnight. Compliance costs are also rising: owners are scrambling to train staff on proper ID inspection, upgrade point-of-sale systems, and draft written policies to demonstrate diligence if enforcement agents come calling.
Perhaps the greatest source of unease lies in the rule’s lack of precision. It does not spell out exactly what constitutes a “consumable hemp product.” Statute and agency practice suggest the definition includes edibles, beverages, vapes, smokable flower, and even topical products containing hemp-derived cannabinoids. But the ambiguity leaves room for confusion and, worse, selective enforcement. A retailer selling THCa pre-rolls may find themselves just as vulnerable as one offering CBD seltzers, depending on how the agency decides to interpret its own mandate.
This emergency measure is not the final word. TABC, together with the Department of State Health Services and Texas A&M AgriLife, has been tasked with developing a more comprehensive regulatory framework in the months ahead. That process could bring potency caps, stricter labeling and testing rules, and expanded enforcement authority. For now, the age restriction is the most immediate change, but it is almost certainly only the first in a series of new regulations.
The politics driving this move are no mystery. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been open about his desire to eliminate intoxicating hemp products altogether, while Abbott has staked out a slightly less extreme position. The Governor’s emergency order allows him to frame this new rule as a public-safety measure, one that does not require legislative approval yet demonstrates a firm hand. Critics, however, argue that such measures punish small businesses, ignore consumer demand, and push Texans back toward illicit markets.
For retailers, survival will depend on vigilance. Shops must ensure that every sale is backed by proper ID verification, every product is tested and documented, and every employee is trained to avoid mistakes that could cost the entire business. Many are treating this week as a crash course in compliance, drafting policies, posting new signs, and preparing to defend themselves against enforcement actions that may come swiftly once October arrives.
Texas’s hemp market has weathered raids, lawsuits, and political attacks before. But this new rule is a reminder of how quickly the landscape can change—and how much power state regulators wield over the future of an industry that has only recently found its footing. Whether it proves to be a commonsense guardrail or simply another step toward prohibition depends on who is telling the story. What is certain is that the battle over hemp in Texas is far from finished.
