SCOTX Inks a Bummer for Hempsters

This is hardly a wow, man, decision. But for Texas hemp-producing interests that hoped now-legal hemp might be processed for smoking, the bar is not that high: The Texas Supreme Court’s decision last week held that hemp, though otherwise legal, could not be sold for smoking.A Texas trial court had ruled the statute banning smokeable hemp unconstitutional, declared the rule invalid and permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the prohibition. In Texas Department of State Health Services v. Crown Distributing LLC et al. the supreme court held in a majority opinion by Justice Jeff Boyd that the state constitutional due-course-of-law provision does not protect any liberty or business interest that would allow hemp joints to roll and sell joints.Bummer.The majority explained that the Texas Constitution, in article 1, section 19, guarantees that no citizen “shall be deprived of life, liberty, property, privileges or immunities, or in any manner disfranchised, except by the due course of the law of the land.” That means, the hemp producers and sellers argued, consumers should be allowed to bogart that joint or pass it on, my friend.Not so, consumers. The only bogarting will be the state’s, the court essentially held. The case came to the…