WeedPress: The Paper Trail

An Oct. 28 post on Jones’s X account, sharing a panel segment, calls Texas Republicans’ “hard stance” on marijuana an “unforced error” days before Election Day. Texas voters do disapprove of how state leaders have handled marijuana and THC, but the statewide polling cited here does not show the issue sinking the GOP on its own.

By Jason Karimi, Publisher

A panel segment from The Alex Jones Show, posted to Alex Jones’s X account at 5:08 p.m. Central time on Oct. 28, argues that Texas Republicans’ handling of hemp-derived THC has become a political liability. The post is headlined “UNFORCED ERROR: Republicans SMOKED By Hard Stance On Marijuana” and says, “How Banning Weed May Lead To A Crushing Defeat For The Texas GOP.” The attached video runs about 4 minutes, 40 seconds.¹

The clip is a panel discussion, not a Jones monologue. Jones’s account promoted the longer broadcast it came from that afternoon, listing guests Royce Lopez and Mersh and the topic “Republicans Facing A Slaughter In The Midterms.”² According to a WeedPress machine transcription of the clip, one panelist says:

“Now is not the time to have done those weed laws in Texas. … It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like, you want a state to turn blue? When all this stuff is going on, you make that your priority.”¹

The machine transcript also records a panelist calling it “just a bad political move,” and a panelist saying Democrat James Talarico “looks like he’s probably going to beat Ken Paxton” in the U.S. Senate race, while urging viewers to vote for Paxton.¹ Jones does not appear on camera in the frames WeedPress reviewed. WeedPress could not determine from the clip whether he took part off camera, or confirm which panelist said each line. This article therefore treats the claim as the argument of the segment Jones chose to post, rather than as a direct statement by Jones, and tests it against the public record and the polling.

What Texas actually did

In 2025 the Legislature passed Senate Bill 3, which would have banned consumable hemp products containing any THC. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called it one of his “top five” bills in 17 years. Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed it on June 22, 2025. He said the ban “puts federal and state law on a collision course” and would be “dead on arrival in court,” and he asked lawmakers to regulate instead.³ Two special sessions followed. The Senate passed bans; the House did not. When the second session ended on Sept. 3, 2025, Patrick said, “My position remains unchanged; the Senate and I are for a total THC ban.”⁴

One week later, Abbott issued Executive Order GA-56. It barred sales to minors and ordered the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to write new rules. Abbott summed it up on X as “Safety for kids, freedom for adults.”⁵ Patrick responded that the order “has sent a signal to the THC industry that they have a state seal of approval.”⁶

The DSHS rules took effect March 31, 2026. They set the purchase age at 21 and switched to a total-THC test at 0.3 percent, a change the Texas Tribune reported bans smokeable THCA flower and pre-rolled joints. They also raised fees from $258 to $10,000 per manufacturing facility and from $155 to $5,000 per retail registration.⁷ Industry groups sued. The state’s appeal of a temporary injunction in the case is pending in the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, with oral argument set for Dec. 8, 2026. The Texas Hemp Business Council, a plaintiff, says the challenged rules remain enforceable in the meantime.⁸

The Texas Supreme Court also reshaped the issue. On May 1, 2026, the court held in Texas Department of State Health Services v. Sky Marketing Corp. that the health commissioner acted within her authority when she listed manufactured delta-8 THC as a Schedule I substance. “If the legislature desires to legalize powerful drugs, it has every tool it needs to do so,” Justice Evan Young wrote.⁹ DSHS reinstated its definitions effective July 31, 2026.¹⁰ Talarico criticized the result, calling it “a gift to the cartels.”¹¹

So the “weed laws” the panel criticized were not an enacted THC-ban statute. The Legislature’s ban was vetoed. The restrictions that reached retailers came through Abbott’s executive order, agency rules and the delta-8 definitions DSHS reinstated after the court ruling. All of it followed a Republican governor’s veto of the outright ban.

Other state actions complicate the picture. House Bill 46 (2025) expanded the Texas Compassionate Use Program. It added chronic pain, traumatic brain injury, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel disease, and terminal illness or hospice care to the list of qualifying conditions, and it raised the number of dispensing licenses to 15.¹² In March 2026, Patrick told a Senate committee to study “the risk of being diagnosed with a THC-induced psychotic disorder” before the 2027 session.¹³ Attorney General Ken Paxton sued cities over voter-approved marijuana-decriminalization ordinances. In September and December 2025, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from San Marcos and Austin, which left rulings against those ordinances in place.¹⁴

The 2026 Republican Party of Texas platform opposes “legalization and decriminalization of illicit natural or illegal synthetic drugs.” It says the state “shall retain cannabis as a Schedule I drug,” and it calls for banning converted THC such as delta-8 and delta-10 and closing “hemp loopholes.” A business-regulation plank also lists “Eliminate use of hemp as an agricultural commodity.”¹⁵

What voters say

Polling shows broad voter resistance to the crackdown, though Republican voters have been more divided. In June 2025, the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll found 53 percent opposed SB 3 and 31 percent supported it. Republicans split, 46 percent for and 39 percent against.¹⁶ In August 2026, 22 percent approved of how state leaders and the Legislature have handled “marijuana/THC laws” and 46 percent disapproved. That was one of the largest negative gaps among the 17 policy areas tested.¹⁷

The same polling also shows the limits of the issue. In April 2025, only 18 percent of voters called new limits on cannabis-derived products “extremely important,” which ranked 15th of 17 issues. Among the most conservative voters, though, 61 percent supported a complete ban. Those voters can carry outsized weight in Republican primaries.¹⁸

The races on the ballot

U.S. Senate. Paxton, the Republican nominee after defeating Sen. John Cornyn in the primary, did not answer the Texas Tribune’s candidate questionnaire. Asked in August about Texas’ THC restrictions, he said, “I don’t know the details of it.” Talarico told the Tribune, “Like prohibition, bans don’t work,” and said he would support legalizing marijuana for adults. Libertarian Ted Brown would remove cannabis from the federal schedules.¹⁹

Lieutenant governor. Patrick faces Democratic state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, whose campaign says, “Texas needs a sensible regulatory framework for THC, rather than outright prohibition.”²⁰

Governor. Abbott faces Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa. Abbott’s THC record is the veto, the executive order and the agency rules that followed.

The University of Houston’s Hobby School surveyed 2,000 likely voters Oct. 10-14, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.19 percentage points. It found Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46 percent, a lead within the poll’s margin of error. It found Abbott ahead of Hinojosa 49 percent to 46 percent, and Patrick ahead of Goodwin 47 percent to 42 percent.²¹ The Texas Politics Project’s August poll of registered voters had Talarico narrowly ahead, 42 percent to 39 percent, Abbott up 45 percent to 40 percent and Patrick up 42 percent to 35 percent.¹⁷

The federal backdrop

Federal changes are separate from the Texas races, but they will affect some of the same hemp-derived products after Election Day. Congress’s hemp rewrite removes hemp status, effective Nov. 12, 2026, from products with cannabinoids the plant cannot produce. The rest takes effect Dec. 11, 2026, including a 0.4-milligram total-THC cap per container. For WeedPress’s South Dakota readers, the same federal changes apply there.²² The April 28, 2026, federal order moved only FDA-approved drug products containing marijuana and marijuana covered by a state medical marijuana license to Schedule III; other marijuana remains in Schedule I.²³

Testing the claim

Part of the segment’s argument holds up. Texas voters disapprove of state leaders’ handling of marijuana and THC laws, the SB 3 ban polled poorly, Democratic candidates including Talarico and Goodwin are criticizing the restrictions and calling for regulation or legalization instead, and the Republican Senate nominee is narrowly behind in the cited polls.

The rest is harder to support. If THC policy were the main driver of votes, Patrick might be expected to be in the most trouble, since he is the official most identified with the ban. Yet in the Hobby School poll, Patrick’s 5-point lead is larger than that of Abbott, who vetoed the ban and leads by 3, while Paxton, who has said little about it, trails. The polls also suggest other liabilities for Paxton: Texans name inflation and the economy as the top problem, and in the August poll “honest and trustworthy” was the trait Republicans were least likely to say fits Paxton. Republican enthusiasm also lagged in August: 39 percent of Republicans said they were “extremely enthusiastic” about voting, compared with 52 percent in August 2022.¹⁷ None of the polls cited here isolates THC as a reason for anyone’s vote.

The fairest reading is that THC policy may be one irritant among several for Texas Republicans this year. It is not a proven cause of defeat. Election Day may show whether candidates associated with the restrictions underperformed, but even a loss would not prove THC policy was the cause.

Responses

After publication, WeedPress asked The Alex Jones Show, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s office and the campaigns of Ken Paxton, James Talarico, Vikki Goodwin and Ted Brown for comment on Oct. 29. WeedPress found no public response from Texas Republican officials to the Jones segment as of publication.

Ted Brown. Brown, the Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate, said in an emailed response to WeedPress on Oct. 29 that Texas’ new THC restrictions “are definitely hurting Republicans and helping Democrats and hopefully Libertarians as well.” He called Patrick “the main villain,” describing him as “some kind of Reefer Madness nut from the 1950s” who “is single-handedly responsible for these restrictions.”²⁴

Brown said he is “clearly running on a pro-legalization platform” and hopes “that position will gain votes.” He said his Democratic opponent, Talarico, “seems pretty good on this issue, so I will give him that, but you can really only trust Libertarians to not backslide on cannabis.” Brown said he would remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances and “have no federal marijuana laws whatsoever,” adding, “There should be no federal hemp limits, and I would seek to repeal them.”²⁴

Brown’s view that the restrictions are hurting Republicans is his opinion; the polls cited in this article do not isolate THC as a reason for anyone’s vote. The record described above shows that the restrictions now in effect came through Abbott’s executive order, DSHS rules and a court ruling after Abbott vetoed the Patrick-backed ban. Patrick’s office was among those WeedPress asked for comment on Oct. 29 and was given a chance to respond.

Other responses received will be added here. Tips or documents: weedpressnewstips@gmail.com.

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