A week after Democrats flipped the Texas House and won the lieutenant governor’s race, House Democrats filed bills to legalize adult-use cannabis, with licensed stores and home grow. The Senate is still Republican.
Texas Democrats didn’t wait long. A week after an election that flipped the Texas House and sent Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick packing, Democratic lawmakers filed bills to legalize cannabis for adult use.
Rep. Joe Moody’s House Bill 369 and Rep. John Bucy III’s House Bill 362, both titled the Texas Regulation of Cannabis Act, were filed Monday, the first day of prefiling for the 2027 session. The two bills are largely identical. They were among more than a thousand bills filed that day.
What HB 369 and HB 362 Would Do
- Possession: Adults 21 and older could possess and transport up to 2 ounces, including no more than 15 grams of concentrate.
- Home grow: Up to 12 plants at a private residence, in a locked area not visible from a public place.
- Retail: Licensed businesses would grow, process, transport, test and sell cannabis, under the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
- Hemp: Explicitly excluded from the bills’ definition of cannabis, including consumable hemp products.
- Taxes: 15% on transfers from growers to dispensaries, plus a 20% retail tax on top of regular sales tax.
- Revenue: 50% to the Permanent School Fund, 25% to a veterans’ fund, 15% to drug treatment and 10% to local governments.
- Local control: Cities and counties could not ban or unreasonably restrict cannabis businesses.
Legal possession would not mean stores the next day. The bills would take effect on Sept. 1, 2027, if passed, but give the state until Nov. 1, 2028, to start licensing growers, stores, transporters and testing labs.
The hemp fight stays separate. Texas has already restricted products containing delta-8, delta-10 and certain other cannabinoids, though qualifying delta-9 products remain legal, and federal restrictions on hemp THC are set to tighten in December. HB 362 and HB 369 leave hemp and consumable hemp products out of the new framework entirely.
In the Senate, Sen. Carol Alvarado filed SB 237, a similar framework with a 2.5-ounce possession limit, no new excise tax and room for counties to ban cannabis businesses. Other prefiled bills would reduce penalties for concentrates, add menstrual conditions to the state’s medical program and bar state agencies and local governments from drug testing most workers for cannabinoids.
The Votes Changed. The Senate Didn’t.
Democrats will control Texas’ governor’s office and House for the first time in decades. Vikki Goodwin, who beat Patrick after campaigning against his push to ban hemp THC, will preside over the Senate as lieutenant governor. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa has said she wants Texas voters to decide on legalization.
But Republicans kept control of the Senate, 19 to 12, and every bill needs both chambers. Hinojosa’s referendum would have to take the form of a constitutional amendment, which in Texas needs a two-thirds vote in each chamber before it reaches voters. Democrats don’t have that in the Senate.
Goodwin herself hasn’t committed to full legalization. “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?” she told MS NOW on Saturday, per Marijuana Moment. “So we still need to have conversations about that.”
On hemp she’s been blunter. She told WFAA she is “not in favor of a THC ban” and wants the Department of State Health Services to unwind its hemp rules. “They changed the law through those rules, and they don’t have the authority to do that,” she said. Those rules are being challenged in court.
“I am in favor of treating THC like alcohol.”
Lt. Gov.-elect Vikki Goodwin
Texans are further along than their Senate. In a University of Houston poll conducted in January 2025, 62% of Texans supported legalizing the sale and possession of recreational marijuana, including 53% of Republicans. Last week, Houston voters approved a measure making misdemeanor marijuana possession the “lowest possible enforcement priority” for local police. And U.S. Sen.-elect James Talarico has said he wants to work with President Trump on federal legalization.
What Happens Next
- Jan. 12, 2027: The Legislature convenes.
- March 12, 2027: Deadline to file most bills.
- The odds: In the 2025 regular session, lawmakers filed 8,719 bills. Just 1,213 passed both chambers.
Legalization bills have died in Austin before, every one of them in a Legislature Republicans ran. This time, they start in a House Democrats control. The Senate is where they’ll find out how much the election really changed.
