Last week, police in Allen raided nine vape shops and arrested several people. The police, who were supported by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Collin County Sheriff’s Office, claimed that the shops were selling products with THC levels above the legal limit.
THC is the psychoactive component of the cannabis plant – in other words, the part that gets people high. An attorney representing the shops has said publicly they were selling legal cannabis products.
Jacob Vaughn, a staff writer for the Dallas Observer who covers cannabis, joined Texas Standard with more.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Now in Allen, we’re talking about raids on vape shops. But at many convenience stores in Texas, right there crowding the space with lottery tickets, are stacks and stacks of vapes, many of which contain THC or some variant. Can you explain what cannabis products are legal in Texas and what isn’t?
So the state and federal laws regarding hemp are pretty broad. It essentially defines hemp [which is legal] as cannabis with 0.3 percent delta-9 THC or less. That’s an important distinction because there are a number of different forms of THC, such as delta-8 THC, which the law is essentially silent on.
Because hemp laws only specifically limit the amount of delta-9 you can have in a product, people manufacture products with these other forms of THC. The state did try to ban these other forms of THC a few years ago, something that’s being battled out in court as we speak.
Currently there’s an injunction on the ban of these forms of THC, so shops are still selling them. So at least for now, things are a little bit more straightforward when it comes to the legality of these other forms of THC.
Particularly murky is where we talk about THCA. THCA is the precursor to delta-9 THC. When heated, THCA turns into delta-9 and can get you high.
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That explains a lot. And so I presume that what’s happening with these raids that the DEA is part of is they’re claiming that THCA is illegal and can’t be sold in Texas.
Well, that’s the weird thing about it. I tried posing that question to both the police chief of Allen and the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Dallas Field Division, and they wouldn’t answer me. They wouldn’t say if THCA was illegal or not.
They wouldn’t even say what kind of products they had seized. So I don’t know if they are talking about THCA products or these other forms of THC that are legal in Texas right now. But if I had to bet on it, I would guess that a lot of the raids that we’re seeing right now have to do with these THCA products.
You talk about “a lot of the raids.” This isn’t the first THC controversy in Allen. Can you give us some context?
A couple of months ago, a handful of Allen hemp shops got a letter from the police department saying that they might be selling products with illegal levels of THC, and that they should remove them.
From what I gather, the shops did remove those products. There had been a raid a few months ago in Allen of one hemp shop. But the recent raids are definitely an escalation of that.
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We’re talking about Allen, but it’s hard not to not to think that we won’t be seeing more raids like this in other parts of the state, or a change in state law. I’m not sure who’s testing these products besides the manufacturers of these vapes. Where do you see this going?
There are lawmakers who want to do away with all of this stuff. So I think that’s going to be a big focus in the next legislative session. It’s a big focus right now on the federal level as lawmakers try to reauthorize the Farm Bill, which is what kicked all this hemp stuff off back in 2018.
Aside from that, I do suspect we’ll see more raids in Allen and outside of Allen. It really depends on the police department that you’re dealing with. And likely a change in state law unless these manufacturers can fight that.
