A single four-gram delta-8 gummy can now expose its owner to a felony bracket that runs to twenty years, because Texas counts the whole edible toward its weight. An ounce of marijuana is still a misdemeanor. And the delta-9 gummies still on the shelf survive on a technicality that federal law is about to erase. Congress just moved that date to December 11, and Trump signed it Wednesday.
Nothing Texas officials did this summer created a new punishment for THC gummies. What changed is the part of the drug code a gummy falls under, and that part does its arithmetic on the whole product.
Three separate legal changes are involved. First, a state scheduling decision that took effect July 31 and covers manufactured THC isomers. Second, a disputed state rule from March 31 that targets THCA and smokable hemp. And third, the federal ban that redefines hemp altogether, which Congress just pushed back by a month.
Start with the weight
Delta-8, delta-10, THCP, THC-O and HHC are all different molecules we knew almost nothing about a decade ago, and all emerged as alternatives to delta-9 THC under the strange legislation created by the 2018 Farm Bill. On July 31 the state health department put its 2021 definition of tetrahydrocannabinols back on the books, and manufactured isomers fall under it. That lands them in Penalty Group 2, a tier that also holds MDMA, psilocybin, mescaline and PCP.
Delta-9 products are not in it.
Possession there is measured by aggregate weight, a phrase the statute defines to include adulterants and dilutants. For an edible, read plainly, the sugar counts. Under a gram is a state jail felony. One to four grams, third degree. Four grams up to 400, second degree, which runs two to twenty years.
What you are holdingHow Texas measures itOffenseOne 4-gram delta-8 gummyAggregate weight, sugar included: 4 gSecond-degree …
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Author: Rolando García / High Times
