The Republican Attorney General of Texas is stepping up his legal challenge to decriminalization policies in localities. However, according to a recent report released by an important advocacy group, the new policy has led to a savings in costs in the amount of half a mil over two years because law enforcement stopped arresting for simple possession.
Ground Game Texas’ analysis, which spearheaded several local reform ballot measures, focused on the city of San Marcos. In San Marcos voters passed a measure decriminalizing crime in 2022. Recently, an appeals court sided with state against the city law and temporarily suspended its enforcement.
San Marcos arrested fewer people for cannabis possession between 2023 and 2024. This decrease translated to an estimated savings total of $444150 for San Marcos, which is home to a population 71,569. This estimate was based on an ACLU figure that stated the average arrest cost to be $4500.
This report showed also that possession arrests fell from 201 to 19 between 2018 and 2024.
“This analysis just confirms what voters in San Marcos already understood—locking people up for low-level marijuana possession is a waste of public dollars that should be going to keep families housed, keep the lights on, and help people build a future,” Catina Voellinger, executive director of Ground Game Texas, said in a press release.
“Communities such as ours are tired watching their priorities being pushed to the side while outdated policies drain our resources,” said she. We’re asking the chief of police to do the right thing, like Austin’s chief, by protecting our community, and focusing on caring, rather than criminalizing.
Whether San Marcos police resume cannabis arrests at their pre-decriminalization rates is yet to be seen, but last month the state Fifteenth Court of Appeals did overturn a lower court ruling that denied a temporary injunction to prevent the law from being enforced, effectively invalidating the cannabis reform measure that was approved by 81 percent of voters.
Eric Martinez, Executive Director of Mano Amiga (which has championed the local ballot decriminalization initiative), said: “As an organization led by a San Marcos community, Mano Amiga is all too familiar with the challenges residents face when trying to provide for their families or access needed services.”
He said that both the Hays County and the City of San Marcos should be focused on improving the quality of their citizens’ lives and decreasing government abuse. He said, “We urge our City Council members to keep fighting in court for the San Marcos Freedom Act and immediately implement policies which deprioritize unnecessarily marijuana enforcement until we receive a final decision.”
The city council in Denton of Texas voted Tuesday 4-3 to repeal the decriminalization laws, which is another defeat for those who are fighting against it.
While several courts have previously upheld local cannabis decriminalization laws, the appellate court comprised of three conservative justices appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican who criticized San Marcos for its policy, also recently took a stand against another court ruling and sided with the State in Austin’s legal challenge of the marijuana laws.
A House Committee recently passed a bill approved by the Senate that prohibits cities from placing any local citizen initiatives on ballots which would decriminalize cannabis or other controlled drugs.
According to the proposed amendments, the state law will be changed so that local authorities “may not put an item on the ballot that provides that they local entity won’t fully enforce state drug laws, such as a charter, or a charter amendment.”
Despite the ongoing litigation and advancement of the House and Senate bills, Texas activists have their targets set on yet another city, Kyle, where they hope put an initiative before voters to enact local marijuana reform at the ballot this coming November.
Abbott has attacked the efforts of local governments to reform cannabis.
“Local communities such as towns, cities and counties, they don’t have the authority to override state law,” the governor said last May “If they want to see a different law passed, they need to work with their legislators. Let’s work together to ensure that as a collective, the state will be able to pass some law.
The state’s statutes would be “ineffective” because voters could “pick and choose” which laws to follow in their city.
Abbott has previously said that he doesn’t believe people should be in jail over marijuana possession—although he mistakenly suggested at the time that Texas had already enacted a decriminalization policy to that end.
Ground Game published a report in 2023 that examined the impact of marijuana reform legislation. The report found that these measures would keep hundreds out of prison, but they also had a negative impact on law enforcement. According to the report, these initiatives also increased voting by virtue of being included on the ballot.
Another cannabis decriminalization measure that went before voters in San Antonio that year was overwhelmingly defeated, but that proposal also included unrelated provisions to prevent enforcement of abortion restrictions.
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Texas lawmakers have sent a controversial proposal to Governor Abbott that will ban all hemp-derived products with any traces THC. This is despite the fact federal law permits cannabis up to 0.3% THC dry weight.
The bill, which would expand Texas’ medical marijuana program significantly, has already passed in both chambers.
Those proposals, as well as another measure from Rep. Joe Moody (D) to decriminalize cannabis statewide, are two of the nearly two dozen cannabis-related proposals filed in Texas for the current legislative session. Other measures include legalizing adult-use cannabis, removing criminal penalties for possession of the drug, and adjusting existing state medical marijuana laws.
Moody sponsored a similar marijuana decriminalization bill last legislative session, in 2023. That measure, HB 218, passed the House on an 87–59 vote but later died in a Senate committee.
The House had already passed earlier cannabis decriminalization proposals during the two previous legislative sessions, in 2021 and 2019. But the efforts have consistently stalled in the Senate amid opposition from the lieutenant governor.
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