The 80th Texas Legislature on Drug Policy

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Observer

Summer, 2007

In the final hour of this session Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio) attached an amendment to a budget bill (SB 10) allowing for a pilot syringe exchange program in Bexar County. This will be the first legal sterile syringe program in Texas. Providing sterile syringes to addicts is among the most effective and certainly least expensive methods of curbing the spread of blood borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. The LWVTX drug policy position supports such programs. A bill by Bob Deuell (R-Greenville) to allow all county public health departments to operate sterile syringe programs passed the full Senate but, was not given a hearing by the House public health committee. A bill to make medical use of cannabis an affirmative defense by Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin) met the same fate.

A bill designed to reduce the number of inmates in county jails and to reduce the amount of time police spend on nonviolent law violations, H.B. 2391 by Jerry Madden (R-Plano), will allow police to issue a court summons (similar to a ticket) to persons stopped for certain Class A and B misdemeanors including those found in possession of up to 4 ounces of marijuana. Previously the law required that they be arrested and jailed. Supporters cited a 1999 Washington study showing that a typical arrest costs taxpayers almost $4,000, figuring in jail costs, judges' and prosecutors' time, indigent defense costs, the cost of transporting prisoners to jail and to court hearings, and the value of the arresting officer's lost patrol time.