Answer:
It is still illegal to use or possess marijuana under Texas law — and has been since 1931.
Explanation:
What changed last year is that hemp is considered different from marijuana. Since the law change, prosecutors and state crime labs have dropped hundreds of pending marijuana charges and declined to pursue new ones because they don’t have the resources to detect a substance’s precise THC content, arguably keeping them from the evidence they need to prove in court if a cannabis substance is illegal.
Gov. Greg Abbott and other state officials insisted that the bill didn’t decriminalize marijuana and that the prosecutors don’t understand the new law. Still, marijuana prosecutions in Texas plummeted by more than half in the six months after the law was enacted, according to the data from the Texas Office of Court Administration.
And medical cannabis is legal in Texas in very limited circumstances. Abbott signed the Texas Compassionate Use Act into law in 2015, allowing people with epilepsy to access cannabis oil with less than 0.5% THC. Last year, he signed House Bill 3703, which expanded the list of qualifying conditions to include diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS.
