Last week, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore announced she was dismissing 32 felony cases related to the possession or sale of marijuana and THC. Moore also stated her office would no longer pursue many low-level marijuana cases in the future.
Her decision, at least in part, was a response to the passage of House Bill 1325, legalizing industrial hemp in Texas. And with that, Moore said there were new hurdles in trying to determine the difference between hemp and marijuana.
“Unfortunately, neither the APD lab nor the DPS labs have a machine that can give us an analysis that will tell us whether it’s hemp or marijuana,” Moore told KLBJ.
The law defines hemp as a plant containing less than 0.3-percent delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient of marijuana.
Without those lab results, Moore said her office would be unable to prove its case.
But just down the road in Hays County, it’s still business as usual, according to District Attorney Wes Mau.
“House Bill 1325, the Hemp Regulation law, did not legalize possession or distribution of small amounts of marijuana in Texas. The Hays County Criminal District Attorney’s Office will continue to accept marijuana possession and distribution cases from law enforcement, and will continue to deal with those cases as justice requires, as well as any additional charges under the new law,” Mau said.
As for the issue of testing to determine the difference between marijuana and hemp, Mau doesn’t expect the new hemp law to change much of anything in that regard.
“As with all criminal cases, if forensic testing is necessary before a prosecution can go forward, the HCDA will examine the need for the testing against the time, money, and resources required to obtain the test results, and proceed as appropriate on a case by case basis,” he said.
