Texas City Offcials Try to Block Cannabis Decriminalization Measures Just Passed by Voters

​Marijuana Moment’s Kyle Jaeger just reported that city officials are trying to block cannabis decriminalization measures in several Texas cities where they were just passed by voters.

Voters had overwhelmingly approved the decriminalization measures at the ballot on November 8th in Harker Heights, Denton, Kileen, Elgin, and San Marcos. But after passing those measures, city councils and officials in three of those cities, so far, have made moves to attempt to block those measures.

City council members from Harker Heights voted at their meeting last week to repeal the decriminalization measure, overriding the will of the people.

City officials in Denton challenged their new decriminalization measures, saying the city is not authorized to make changes to police policies.

City council members in Killeen have said there are legal concerns they must sort through before they will allow the decriminalization measure to go into effect.

The last two cities of Elgin and San Marcos have not made any objections to their cities newly passed decriminalization measures measures. At least not yet!

Mike Siegel, who is a co-founder of Ground Game Texas, which is the activist group which worked to collect signatures for these decriminalization measures, said, “City staff do not have the authority to disregard election results and usurp the will of the voters.”

Ground Game Texas has already started collecting more signatures, in an effort to push back against the local leaders and ensure that the will of the people is enacted.

Ground Game Texas is also continuing their on-going efforts to help other cities get decriminalization measure in their jurisdictions on the next ballot. Currently they have been collecting signatures for the city of San Antonio. They’ll need to collect at least 20,000 of them by January in order to qualify for the ballot scheduled for May 2023.

​These city measures are necessary for Texas, because that state does not allow statewide measures on the ballots that are from citizen-led initiatives. Only local jurisdiction ballots can have citizen-led initiatives, if they qualify. Polls have repeatedly shown that Texas, like the rest of the country, has a majority of citizens who support cannabis legalization.

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