Texas Democrats wasted no time filing adult-use cannabis legalization bills for the 2027 legislative session after flipping their state’s House for the first time since 2002 during last week’s midterm elections.
Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, filed House Bill 369, and Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, filed House Bill 362 on Nov. 9. The identical bills, both titled the Texas Regulation of Cannabis Act, would establish a licensing and taxation framework for commercial activities under the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulation.
In addition, the bills would allow those 21 years and older to possess up to 2 ounces of cannabis or 15 grams of concentrate and grow up to 12 plants at home.
Both pieces of legislation would also impose a 15% wholesale tax on cannabis transferred from a cultivator to a processor or retailer, and a 20% excise tax on dispensary sales (in addition to the state’s normal 6.25% sales tax). The tax revenues would fund public schools (50%), veterans assistance programs (25%), chemical dependency prevention, treatment and rehab services (15%) and local governments for regulation and oversight (10%).
Local governments could not opt out of allowing licensed cannabis businesses to cultivate, produce, process, dispense or transport cannabis in their jurisdictions, although the bills would restrict dispensing hours from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. statewide.
The bills also include consumer safety provisions around laboratory testing, product labeling and child-resistant packaging standards.
Moody and Bucy filed the bills less than a week after Democrats flipped enough seats to overtake the Texas House’s current 86-62 Republican majority. Heading into 2027, Democrats hold an 81-64 majority with five races that remain uncalled from the Nov. 3 election.
“Democrats have won and won big, and now we have to do the job the voters expect and truly deliver for Texas families,” said Moody, who serves as speaker pro tempore, a position appointed by the Texas House Speaker, indicating he’s worked amicably across the aisle since taking office in 2013.
Moody’s comments, reported by The Texas Tribune, came after Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, becoming the first Democrat to be elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards’ 1990 election. Likewise, Texas is sending its first Democrat, James Talarico, to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen’s tenure from 1971-1993.
While Texas House Republicans have slow-walked medical cannabis reform in recent years, with the Lone Star State implementing one of the most restrictive medical cannabis programs in the nation, Moody planted the seed for the adult-use conversation in 2023, when his previous adult-use legalization bill received a committee hearing.
“I do want to impress on you how historic this is,” he told colleagues on the House Committee on Licensing and Administrative Procedures that year, despite anticipating his bill’s defeat. But his goal that year was to start the conversation, he told CBS News Texas. “The time is coming where this will be the law of the land, and so we might as well get in front of that.”
While Moody and Bucy are teeing up adult-use legalization in 2027, that effort faces a divided Legislature, with Republicans maintaining a 19-12 Senate majority.
That said, the Texas Senate will have a new pro-cannabis leader in Democratic Lt. Gov.-elect Vikki Goodwin, who defeated Republican incumbent Dan Patrick by a six-point margin on Nov. 3. In Texas, the lieutenant governor takes a hands-on role in steering legislative priorities in the Senate, including the authority to assign bills to committees and to decide which bills receive a vote on the chamber’s floor.
One issue that Texas voters largely pushed back on was Patrick’s crusade to prohibit the state’s intoxicating hemp products. After winning last week’s election, Goodwin pointed to Patrick’s prohibition effort, telling MS NOW, “We have an opportunity to make sure that we’re supporting small businesses that are in the hemp industry and supporting the veterans and people that use those products to manage their pain, PTSD and so many other things.”
She also said, when it comes to broad cannabis legalization, “We still have to have a lot of conversations about that. There’s differing opinions, even within the industry. There’s been conversations about do we expand our TCUP, the Texas Compassionate Use Program, which is medicinal marijuana, or do we legalize it altogether. So, we still need to have conversations about that.”
While those conversations arrived in the Texas House committee setting in 2023, the new Democratic majority appears to make it inevitable that those conversations will expand further in 2027. However, a state with a divided Legislature has yet to legalize adult-use cannabis through the legislative process.
