A 67-year-old grandmother says she was arrested by the Houston Police Department last year for possession of marijuana, even though she was enrolled in the state’s Compassionate Use Program.
She spent the night in the county lockup and the case was later dismissed, but it got her thinking about how a misdemeanor arrest can cause people to lose their jobs, their housing and their kids. Such arrests over what social justice advocates refer to as minor infractions also cost valuable law enforcement time and resources, they say.
The grandmother and nearly 40,000 other Houstonians signed a petition to put the Houston Freedom Act — a charter amendment to let voters decide whether possession of small amounts of marijuana should be deprioritized by HPD — on the November 3 ballot.
Critics have suggested that the effort initiated by progressive Austin-based nonprofit Ground Game Texas may be just a formality or a plan to mobilize Democrats to go to the polls during the critical midterm elections. Houston Mayor John Whitmire says low-level marijuana arrests haven’t been a priority among HPD officers “frankly, for a very long time.”
But Ground Game has pursued marijuana decriminalization ballot measures since 2021 and successfully passed them in Austin, Bastrop, Dallas, Denton, Elgin, Harker Heights, Killeen, Lockhart and San Marcos.
And it isn’t just about the weed. The group has also successfully petitioned for city worker wage hikes, campaign finance reform, and, in Amarillo, to overturn an anti-abortion travel ban.
The Houston effort toward marijuana deprioritization escalated right around the time that statewide THC regulations — which Ground Game board member Angel Carroll says are overreaching and confusing — took effect on July 31.
“We’ve been doing this for years, prior to it becoming as polarizing as it is right now,” Carroll says. “We started this work in a more hostile environment when it comes to marijuana decriminalization. Now we’re seeing more people openly be like, ‘Yeah, we want this,’ especially veterans who are having access to products taken away.”
Catina Voellinger, executive director of Ground Game Texas, told the Houston Press that even though marijuana may be a low priority at HPD now, they want to codify the policy so it’s on the books if a new mayor is elected or a new police chief is appointed who may have a different philosophy on the matter.
“We’re just saying that Houston should decide, and when they do, this will codify it into the city charter, which is the law of the local land,” she says. “I think that’s just practical.”
What’s on the Ballot
The ballot measure is often characterized as marijuana decriminalization, but that’s a bit of a misnomer, as the substance is still illegal in Texas. The Compassionate Use Program administered by the Texas Department of Public Safety allows physicians to prescribe low-THC cannabis for certain qualifying medical conditions, but even those enrolled in the program aren’t supposed to walk down the street smoking a joint.
The Houston Freedom Act specifies that Class A {between 2 and 4 ounces} and Class B (2 ounces or less) misdemeanor marijuana possession cases be considered the “lowest possible enforcement priority” among HPD officers and that the department support diversion programs for such offenders, including referrals to treatment for mental health or substance use, participation in community service programs or other alternatives to arrest or prosecution.
The measure is only on the ballot for Houston residents, not all of Harris County, to determine how laws should be prioritized and enforced.
Advocates showed up at City Hall on August 11 to promote the charter amendment, and city council members unanimously agreed the following day to put it on the ballot. They had to do so because the petition submitted by Ground Game contained more than 20,000 verified signatures, the required number to put an item up for a vote.
Organizers gathered signatures at fast-food restaurants, farmer’s markets, municipal courts and grocery stores. Voellinger says the response was overwhelmingly positive as they heard stories from Houstonians who felt they’d been victimized by heavy-handed enforcement.
An Iranian-American, who is a U.S. citizen, said he was held by ICE for seven months due to a marijuana possession charge from when he was a teenager. Another family said they were still wrestling with court dates and mounting expenses due to a marijuana “roach” their teen left in a vehicle.
The charter amendment also includes a ban on no-knock warrants. This means that Houston police have to knock on someone’s door and announce themselves before entering a home to serve a warrant. Whitmire says that’s also the department’s standard procedure.
The January 2019 botched Harding Street drug raid involved a fraudulent no-knock search warrant that led to the shooting deaths of homeowners Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, as well as their dog. According to public testimony, an HPD narcotics officer lied in a sworn affidavit to obtain the warrant, falsely claiming a confidential informant had bought heroin at the home.
Since the Harding Street incident, HPD restricted but did not eliminate no-knock warrants, based on an executive order issued by the police chief at the time, Art Acevedo.
The much-discussed 2020 officer-involved shooting death in Louisville, Kentucky, of 26-year-old emergency room nurse Breonna Taylor, was also the result of a no-knock warrant procedure. “It’s a safety measure not just for citizens, but officers as well,” Carroll says. “They should not be going, guns-a-blazing, into someone’s home or business.”
No one is suggesting there’s a tactical SWAT team assigned to patrol the streets looking for people with less than 2 ounces of marijuana in their pockets, but such arrests do occur, Carroll says, and it’s important to get a policy on the books to ensure that officers are focused primarily on public safety, not making low-level drug arrests.
“They never do it until it happens,” she says. “If they never did it, we wouldn’t have had those raids and we wouldn’t see a lot of the things we’re seeing. There are so many stories of so many people who have been affected by this. If you’re moving serious weight, this doesn’t affect you. This is low-level; like someone has a joint on them. Why are we focusing on it? Our officers should be focusing on real crime.”
New THC Laws
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been not-so-quietly leading a crusade to ban the sale of intoxicating hemp-derived products since late 2024. His hard stance against marijuana dates back to 2019 when the Texas House passed a bill reducing penalties for possession of up to an ounce, and Patrick said he would not allow it to come to a Senate vote, calling it a step toward marijuana legalization.
The lieutenant governor got a win in the last legislative session when some THC products were banned, although many people are confused about what they can purchase and possess.
Recreational marijuana is illegal, but hemp, derived from the same plant, is not if the product contains no more than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC. Tinctures and gummies can still be purchased but vape pens with THC and synthetic THC products cannot. Employees at head shops that have been legally selling THC products for years say they have to ship back banned products to the manufacturer.
One of the problems with the new restrictions, according to U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, is that bans on THC products are a “gift to the cartels” and create scenarios in which people buy drugs — which may be used to treat PTSD or help with chronic pain or sleep — from the underground market.
“Texans will still use THC — but instead of getting it safely from a local small business, they’ll go back to getting it from the black market. From the drug cartels,” Talarico said in a statement. “Yes, we should keep these products out of the hands of minors. Yes, we should end deceptive marketing practices. Yes, we should keep smoke shops away from schools. But this draconian ban doesn’t do any of that.
“This is the nanny state at its worst. This is big government at its worst.”
Texas law generally requires cities to enforce state drug laws and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running against Talarico for the U.S. Senate seat in November, has sued cities for telling police not to enforce them. So even if the deprioritization measure passes in November, a legal battle could be forthcoming.
Another problem is that Texas officers don’t have testing mechanisms to determine on the spot whether a vape contains nicotine or THC, and how much delta-9 a product contains, District Attorney Sean Teare said at a recent Oak Forest Area Democrats meeting.
“The Lege, in their infinite wisdom, legalized hemp in 2019 but they kept marijuana illegal. In 2022, they told us about a new way to differentiate between marijuana and hemp. What they never got around to doing was talking to any of our forensic labs and asking if they had a test to differentiate. All the labs, including DPS, would have said they did not,” Teare says.
The tests can be performed at one of just a few labs in the United States, and they are very expensive, the DA added. That creates a problem for an officer trying to arrest someone for possessing marijuana if the person claims that it’s hemp.
“It only got worse when they went to the oils and the vapes because the law made it even murkier about how to make those tests happen,” Teare says. “What we told our law enforcement agencies was that if you have a gas station that’s selling crates of product where the packaging says marijuana, that is a crime. We will accept those charges because that’s its own case. It doesn’t require us to forensically test the substance if they’re marketing and packaging it as something that’s illegal.”
Additionally, the DA’s office will accept Class C tickets from school district police if students violate a policy regarding inhalants on school property. They won’t accept a Class A misdemeanor charge because it can’t easily be proven that a vape contains THC, he says.
Voellinger suggested that the current laws are based on the expectation that police officers are supposed to also be chemists. “Are they expected to stop everybody with gummy bears in their pockets because it may or may not be illegal to have?” she says.
She added that criminalization of hemp products is a “lazy policy answer.”
“Texas regulates alcohol. We regulate big tobacco. We don’t send someone to jail simply because they possess a six-pack of beer,” she says. “The government created rules around these products. Why is our instinct with cannabis, a plant, to reach for handcuffs rather than sensible regulation?”
Carroll says she suffered injuries in a car accident six years ago and uses CBD ointment when she can’t get to a doctor for Botox injections in her neck. CBD oil isn’t currently banned, but she says she’s not putting anything past the lieutenant governor in future sessions.
“Dan Patrick is focusing on gummies when people don’t have affordable healthcare,” she said. “Why are we focusing on marijuana? A lot of veterans use cannabis and THC products to help with their PTSD. It’s an alternative to opioids for pain management. What would it look like if we were able to regulate this and use the taxes to fund healthcare, to fund our public schools and programs that the Republican establishment says we don’t have the money for?”
The Big Picture
Carroll says that because deprioritizing marijuana is a progressive idea, “we do see an uptick in people coming out to vote and traditionally that helps Democratic candidates.”
However, she and Voellinger both scoffed at the notion that mobilizing people to vote on issues that affect their lives somehow reveals an ulterior motive. “It’s just democracy,” Voellinger says. “If the criticism of this campaign is that it might inspire people who don’t normally vote to show up and participate, I don’t think that’s an indictment of our campaign. It’s an indictment of how comfortable we’ve become in our society with people not participating.”
University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus says “Dems are fighting mad” over a lot of things that have occurred under the GOP leadership of Gov. Greg Abbott, Paxton and Patrick. The outcome of midterm elections will depend on turnout and enthusiasm, he says.
“This no-knock warrant and marijuana position on the ballot is going to drive people to the polls. That’s what Dems need, basically down-ballot support or success to build the top of the ticket,” he says.
The professor said he thinks Ground Game’s proposition “has legs” and some will vote for it because they’re mad about the statewide THC restrictions.
“THC has become a more explosive issue than it was a year ago,” he says. “The way it got handled was kind of politically balanced but also administratively a little ham-handed. People are starting to realize what the state did and were befuddled by it and eventually angered by it. It’s going to cut into some people’s priorities and preferences. I think this issue has relevance, especially with younger voters.”
Paxton and other candidates have been asked about THC and marijuana possession enforcement and have “ducked and dodged around it,” Rottinghaus says. “Paxton pretends that he doesn’t know about it but his office has literally fought cities that have tried to decriminalize. The specific ban and administrative change around what’s allowable wasn’t his doing but it’s in his orbit, and most of the people who are in favor of this are going to vote against him.”
Even some Republicans are mad about the THC ban “because you’re taking away this little piece of joy that they have,” Rottinghaus says. “They may use it to go to sleep or have a nice weekend with friends and a glass of wine. You’re taking this away from them in a way that doesn’t feel like it has any real benefit or a real upside.”
Voellinger says she hopes the weed deprioritization measure will ultimately reduce the number of people whose lives are being upended over an arrest. Advocates for deprioritization have said it disproportionately affects Black and brown people and they argue that frequent low-level marijuana arrests are being made by HPD, but the data isn’t easily searchable.
A provision in the November 3 ballot measure calls for a city audit of misdemeanor marijuana enforcement “to promote transparency, community awareness, and evidence-based policymaking.” The audit must cover the last five years’ worth of data.
Voellinger says she expects the charter amendment will pass and she hopes it will be an opportunity to reform some of the “draconian” practices that Texas police departments have become accustomed to. A grandmother with a Compassionate Use Program card should never be thrown in jail, she says.
“People are just tired of the political games and the theater,” she says. “It’s like, we never bought tickets to the circus but we’re here on the ride and we just want off. We need off. We are tired of these crazy policies that don’t make sense and harm us instead of healing us.”
