Episode 2 of High Times’ Texas Cannabis Chronicles goes inside the machinery of the crackdown, where the Lieutenant Governor called hemp operators “terrorists” and a multibillion-dollar industry waits to find out if its legal business becomes a crime.
If Episode 1 of Texas Cannabis Chronicles showed the explosion, Episode 2 takes you inside the machine. The second installment of the High Times documentary series, directed by filmmaker JT Barnett, trades the wide shot for the engine room: the lobbying, the lawsuits, the agency rule-writing, and the political muscle quietly working to shrink what has become one of the largest cannabis markets on earth.
The episode’s title comes from its sharpest moment. At a Capitol hearing, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick floated the idea that the people behind Texas hemp products might be running something sinister. “We have no idea who’s making this product,” he says. “Are they terrorists? Is this a terrorist money-laundering scheme?” The operators in the room were stunned. “We were just called terrorists by the Lieutenant Governor of Texas,” one says, still processing it on camera.
That’s the temperature of the fight Barnett is documenting. And the people he follows aren’t abstractions. They’re the founders of an Austin hemp company, the advocates working the Capitol on lobby day, the shop owners who built legal businesses on the back of a 2019 law, and the lawyers promising to sue the state, in their words, “into oblivion.”
How Texas Got Here
The backstory the episode lays out is real. In 2019, Texas passed HB 1325, legalizing hemp in line with the federal 2018 Farm Bill. The state didn’t expect what happened next. The hemp market exploded into a business that operators in the film describe as supporting tens of thousands of jobs and billions in revenue, sold across more than 8,000 locations …
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Author: High Times / High Times
