Retailers in and around Howe are reworking their shelves after a Texas ban on smokable THCA hemp took effect, replacing it with products made from THCP.
The restriction comes from the Texas Department of State Health Services, which adopted rules changing how the state measures the THC content of consumable hemp. Under that calculation, smokable hemp flower containing THCA, a compound that converts to THC when it is heated, no longer qualifies as legal. The rules took effect March 31, 2026.
The ban arrived through the health agency rather than the Legislature. Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed Senate Bill 3, which would have broadly banned THC in consumable hemp, in 2025 and called for the products to be regulated instead. After the DSHS rules were challenged in court, a Texas appeals court declined to keep temporary protections in place, allowing the state to begin enforcing the ban, though litigation has continued.
With THCA flower pulled from shelves, retailers have shifted to products made with THCP, or tetrahydrocannabiphorol. The cannabinoid occurs naturally in hemp, but only in trace amounts, and it was not specifically named in the DSHS rules, a gap that some shop owners and attorneys view as a legal opening.
Opinions on that reading differ. David Sergi, a cannabis attorney, told Spectrum News that because THCP is not mentioned in the rules, it is "fair game" to sell. Dr. Katharine Neill Harris, a drug-policy researcher at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, urged caution, saying the health effects of the newer cannabinoid are not well understood and raising concerns about how it is made. Researchers estimate THCP binds to the body's cannabinoid receptors far more strongly than delta-9 THC, the main intoxicating compound in marijuana, and reaching intoxicating levels in a product generally requires producing it chemically.
At a shop in San Marcos, Green Goddess employee Molly McLaughlin told Spectrum News the store had offered THCP in gummies before and was now selling it in flower form for the first time.
