Crisis – Smoke Master

Texas Officials Call Hemp A Crisis While Bigger Public Safety Threats Go Unanswered (Op-Ed)

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:47:15 +0000

“Texas can protect children and consumers without rebuilding the drug war.”

By Michael A. Davis

Texas officials have spent years treating hemp-derived THC as if it were the greatest danger facing the state. Now the crackdown is no longer political theater.

Beginning July 31, Texas restored a controlled substance schedule that allows products labeled as containing delta-8 THC—or found to contain more than trace amounts of certain tetrahydrocannabinols—to be detained and referred to law enforcement.

That does not mean every hemp product is illegal. Products that comply with the state’s delta-9 THC limit remain legal. But it does mean many products that adults bought openly from registered businesses have suddenly been pushed out of the regulated marketplace.

Texas leaders may call that a public-safety victory. I see a policy that could make the market less safe.

I write from the perspective of someone who has lived through incarceration and spent years working on reentry. I know how quickly lawmakers can turn a complicated social problem into a criminal offense.

I also know what happens after the speeches end. The politician moves to the next issue, while ordinary people live with arrests, records, lost jobs and closed doors.

There are legitimate concerns about intoxicating hemp products. Some have been sold in packaging that appeals to children. Potency can be inconsistent. Labels can be confusing, and testing standards have not always given consumers the protection they deserve.

No responsible advocate should dismiss those problems. But those problems call for regulation, not denial.

Texas already showed that it knows how to build guardrails. The state imposed a minimum purchase age of 21 and required government-issued identification. Regulators adopted rules involving labeling, testing, packaging and inspections. Those protections could have been strengthened with uniform dosage limits, random state testing, tougher penalties for businesses that sell to minors and clear rules against child-oriented advertising.

Instead, Texas chose to remove certain products from legal shelves while leaving demand in place.

That is where the real danger begins.

A licensed retailer can be inspected. Its products can be tested. A batch can be traced or recalled. A business can lose its license for selling to a child. An illegal seller has no license to lose, no testing requirement to follow and no reason to check identification.

A teenager who walks into a compliant smoke shop should be asked for identification. A dealer operating through social media, a parking lot or an unregulated delivery network will not care whether the customer is 17 or 37.

This crackdown does not eliminate hemp-derived THC. It creates more room for untested products, counterfeit labels and sellers who cannot be held accountable. It may also give organized criminal networks another market to exploit.

That does not mean every illegal sale is tied to a cartel, and we should not make claims the evidence cannot support. But when government closes a legal channel without ending consumer demand, illegal suppliers gain an opening. That is basic economics, not fearmongering.

Texas applies a different standard to alcohol.

Alcohol is sold in grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants, stadiums and entertainment districts. It is present in homes and at parties across the state. A teenager may never need to fool a cashier to get it; the alcohol may already be in a refrigerator or handed over by an older friend.

Texas does not respond by outlawing beer, wine and liquor for adults. It licenses sellers, checks identification, taxes the products and penalizes violations. The system is imperfect, but the principle is clear: Adult access can coexist with rules designed to protect children.

Alcohol and hemp are not identical. They do not have to be identical for the double standard to matter. If Texas believes regulation can reduce the risks associated with alcohol, it should explain why regulation is suddenly considered impossible when the product is hemp-derived THC.

The imbalance is even harder to defend when we look at the crises Texas already faces.

The state Department of State Health Services says drug poisoning deaths increased 68 percent from 2019 to 2024. In 2023, drug poisoning was the leading cause of injury-related death for Texans ages 24 to 69. Families are still being devastated by fentanyl, while communities also confront gun violence, violent crime, untreated mental-health needs and unaffordable health care.

Those problems require sustained investment in prevention, treatment, enforcement and recovery. They are expensive, complicated and politically difficult. Banning a product is simpler. It creates a headline and allows leaders to declare victory before the consequences are measured.

We should also be honest about the economic interests surrounding this debate.

Hemp-derived THC beverages are becoming real competitors in the broader adult-beverage market. NielsenIQ reported that mainstream retail sales reached $239 million over the latest 52-week period, an increase of 135 percent from the prior year. Some consumers are replacing a beer, glass of wine or cocktail with a low-dose THC drink.

Some alcohol businesses see that market as an opportunity and have begun selling or distributing THC beverages. Others may see it as a threat. That division matters because “the alcohol industry” is not a single voice. Still, political contributions from people connected to alcohol distribution deserve public scrutiny when Texas leaders push policies that could remove a competing product.

Campaign-finance records have prompted questions about major donations to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who led efforts to restrict hemp products in the most recent legislative session, from John Nau, a longtime beer distribution executive. A contribution does not prove a deal, and it would be irresponsible to claim otherwise. But Texans are entitled to ask whether established industries have greater access to political power than the small businesses and consumers who will bear the cost of prohibition.

Following the money is not the same as alleging corruption. It is part of holding government accountable.

Texas can protect children and consumers without rebuilding the drug war.

Require every intoxicating product to be sold only to adults 21 and older. Mandate reliable identification checks, child-resistant packaging and plain labeling. Establish reasonable per-serving and per-package THC limits. Require independent laboratory testing, scannable batch information and random state verification. Punish businesses that mislabel products or sell to minors. Fund public education and impaired-driving enforcement.

Those are not weak measures. They are what serious regulation looks like.

Public safety should be measured by harm reduced, not products banned. If the result of Texas’s crackdown is that adults turn from accountable retailers to illegal sellers, then the state will have created the very danger it claimed to prevent.

The question is not whether hemp should have rules. It should.

The question is whether Texas wants rules that protect people—or prohibition that protects politics.

Michael A. Davis is an Austin-based writer, author and reentry advocate whose work examines Texas politics, criminal justice, public policy and communities too often overlooked by those in power. He is the author of the books “The Road to Reentry,” “Pursuing Redemption,” “Reclaiming Freedom” and “The Mind You Inherited.”

Image element courtesy of AnonMoos.

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The Overlooked Smoking Crisis in Mental Health, and How Vaping Could Help

admin — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 05:38:56 +0000

People living with serious mental illness remain one of the groups most severely affected by cigarette smoking—and one of those least well served by conventional tobacco-control strategies.

While smoking has declined dramatically across many developed countries, prevalence among people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses remains disproportionately high.

UK public-health data have estimated smoking prevalence at around 40% among people with serious mental illness, while people with mental health conditions overall are almost 2.5 times as likely to smoke as the general population. Smoking is also considered a major contributor to the 10-to-20-year life-expectancy gap experienced by people with poor mental health.

Against that background, growing evidence suggests that tobacco harm reduction—including vaping and other smoke-free nicotine alternatives—deserves a much larger role in mental health care.

The close knit relationship between Schizophrenia and smoking

The disparity is particularly pronounced among people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). A newly published scoping revie? in Frontiers in Psychiatry notes that smoking rates among people with schizophrenia remain around two to four times those seen among people without psychiatric disorders, with nicotine dependence also typically more severe. Smoking contributes to cardiovascular and respiratory disease and tobacco-related cancers in a population already experiencing substantially elevated premature mortality.

The reasons are complex. Nicotine may temporarily influence attention and cognition, while smoking can become intertwined with managing boredom, stress, social isolation and psychiatric symptoms. Unemployment, deprivation and institutional cultures can further reinforce smoking. Meanwhile, people with serious mental illness have historically been less likely to receive effective cessation support, despite evidence that their desire to quit is comparable to that of other smokers. This matters because simply telling people to stop smoking has never worked.

Why Vaping May Offer Something Different

Vaping retains hand-to-mouth movement, inhalation, throat sensation and the ability to regulate nicotine intake throughout the day. For smokers whose cigarette use is deeply embedded in daily routines, these characteristics may make switching more acceptable

The 2026 Frontiers review examined studies published between January 2020 and February 2026 involving vaping among people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders or broader serious mental illness. Only three studies, reported across four publications and involving 323 participants, met the criteria—an important reminder that this remains an emerging evidence base. Nevertheless, the researchers found that vaping interventions appeared feasible and acceptable and produced preliminary evidence of substantial reductions in cigarette consumption and exposure to tobacco-related toxicants. Benefits appeared more sustainable when access to devices was combined with behavioural support.

One reason vaping may work particularly well for heavily dependent smokers is that it replaces more than nicotine. Patches deliver nicotine but do not reproduce the sensory and behavioural features of smoking. Vaping retains hand-to-mouth movement, inhalation, throat sensation and the ability to regulate nicotine intake throughout the day. For smokers whose cigarette use is deeply embedded in daily routines, these characteristics may make switching more acceptable. That could be particularly valuable for people with serious mental illness, who often have higher nicotine dependence and have struggled with previous quit attempts.

Promising results with vaping

One of the clearest signals came from a 2021 pilot study involving 40 adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders who smoked but had no intention of quitting or reducing their cigarette consumption. Participants received high-nicotine e-cigarettes for 12 weeks. By the end of the intervention, 40% had stopped smoking cigarettes, while 92.5% had either quit or reduced their cigarette consumption by at least half. Median cigarette consumption fell from 25 cigarettes per day to six. At 24 weeks, 35% remained abstinent from cigarettes.

The study was small and lacked a control group, so the figures should not be interpreted as definitive cessation rates. Nevertheless, the results demonstrate something important: even smokers with schizophrenia who were initially uninterested in quitting were willing and able to substantially replace cigarettes with a non-combustible product.

A larger randomised study led by Sarah Pratt produced similarly encouraging evidence among smokers with serious mental illness who had previously been unable to quit. Providing e-cigarettes produced substantial reductions in both cigarettes smoked per day and exhaled carbon monoxide compared with assessment alone. During the eight-week intervention, 19–22% of participants receiving vapes reported smoking no cigarettes, compared with none in the control group. Nicotine dependence did not increase, and any reported side effects were minor.

Vaping for smoking cessation: the wider evidence

These findings are consistent with the much larger evidence base in the general smoking population. The latest Cochrane living systematic review analysed 104 studies involving more than 30,000 adults and concluded that nicotine e-cigarettes help more people stop smoking for at least six months than conventional nicotine replacement therapy.

The Royal College of Physicians similarly concluded in its 2024 evidence review that e-cigarettes remain an important tool for reducing death, disability and health inequalities caused by tobacco. Importantly, quitting smoking does not appear to worsen mental health—the concern that has historically made some clinicians reluctant to intervene.

A major systematic review published in the BMJ found that people who stopped smoking experienced reductions in anxiety, depression and stress alongside improvements in psychological quality of life compared with people who continued smoking. The pattern was similar in people with and without psychiatric conditions. That challenges the assumption that cigarettes provide a net psychological benefit to people experiencing mental illness.

Harm Reduction offers an alternative to abstinence

For smokers who can stop completely using varenicline, NRT, behavioural therapy or other established interventions, those options should remain available. Indeed, evidence indicates that both varenicline and bupropion can help people with schizophrenia quit, without clear evidence in clinical trials that they worsen psychiatric symptoms. The problem is that no single treatment works for everybody.

Tobacco harm reduction offers another route: if complete nicotine abstinence is not currently achievable, eliminate the combustion first. Cigarette smoke—not nicotine itself—causes most smoking-related disease. Vapes avoid burning tobacco and therefore eliminate exposure to tar and carbon monoxide while substantially reducing exposure to numerous other toxicants. The NHS consequently describes vaping as likely to be far less harmful than smoking and recommends it as one option for adults trying to quit. Other smoke-free options, including nicotine pouches and traditional NRT, could similarly expand choice for people who find inhaled products unsuitable.

Another important clinical consideration is that switching from smoking to smoke-free nicotine products such as vapes or nicotine pouches may require the reduction of certain psychiatric medications, particularly clozapine and olanzapine. This is because chemicals in tobacco smoke—not nicotine—speed up the metabolism of these medicines. When smoking stops, drug levels can rise, so clinicians may need to monitor patients and reduce medication doses where appropriate. This would, of course, be a very positive factor for patients on such medications since these come with a number of unpleasant side effects. Therefore, with appropriate medical supervision, tobacco harm reduction can be safely integrated into psychiatric care and should not be viewed as a barrier to helping people move away from combustible cigarettes; quite the contrary.

Mental health services should offer choice, not therapeutic neglect

The emerging evidence suggests mental health services should stop treating smoking as an unavoidable feature of serious psychiatric illness. Rather than insisting on a single cessation pathway, services could offer behavioural support alongside vaping, NRT and approved cessation medicines, allowing patients to choose an approach compatible with their circumstances and preferences. NICE already recommends offering smokers a choice of interventions based on previous experience, health and social circumstances.

People with serious mental illness have been disproportionately exposed to cigarettes for decades. Tobacco harm reduction provides an opportunity to narrow that inequality by meeting smokers where they are and offering alternatives capable of satisfying nicotine dependence without exposing them to the deadly products of combustion. For a population in which traditional approaches have repeatedly fallen short, safer nicotine alternatives should not be regarded as a last resort. They should be considered part of the mainstream effort to reduce preventable disease and premature death.

https://www.vapingpost.com/2026/03/03/nicotine-addiction-isnt-one-size-fits-all-genetics-brain-science-and-mental-health-differences-shape-dependance/

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