Bipartisan Majority Of Texans Back Marijuana Legalization, Poll Finds

A strong bipartisan majority of Texans support legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana—and most also want to see the state ban unregulated intoxicating hemp products—according to a new poll.

The survey from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs that was released on Tuesday looked at public opinion on a wide range of policy issues, including cannabis reform.

It found that an overwhelming 79 percent of respondents back legalizing medical marijuana. That includes 86 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents.

Another 62 percent are in favor of recreational legalization—with 71 percent of Democrats, 53 percent of Republicans supporting the reform and 63 percent of independents on board.

Support for decriminalizing cannabis stands at 69 percent—including 79 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents.

“After having provided their stand-alone evaluations of these three policy proposals, Texans were asked which one of the three policies was closest to their own personal preference, with a fourth option of maintaining the current Texas policies and regulations governing marijuana use in the Lone Star State,” the poll report says. “When forced to pick one of the four policy options, 32% of Texans opted for the legalization of recreational marijuana, 29% for the legalization of medical marijuana and 17% for the decriminalization of the possession of marijuana, with 22% preferring the maintenance of the status quo in Texas under which the sale and use of marijuana is illegal.”

The poll also asked about the prospect of banning intoxicating hemp products that have proliferated in the state in the absence of a regulated marijuana market. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they’d support such a ban, with Republicans more supportive (61 percent) than Democrats (48 percent).

Broken down by age, “70 percent of the members of Generation Z support the ban on the sale of consumable THC compared to 46 percent of the members of the Silent Generation/Baby Boomer cohort and 49 percent of Generation X.”

The survey involved interviews with 1,200 Texas adults from January 13-21, with a +/- 2.83 percentage point margin of error.

Some of the sentiment expressed in the poll is shared by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller (R), who penned an op-ed last month calling for expanded access to medical cannabis while cracking down on the unregulated consumable hemp market.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said in December that the state Senate would be taking steps to initiate such a ban on products like delta-8 THC.

Just after the prefiling window opened for new bills in 2025, Texas lawmakers proposed a number of cannabis-related reforms, including measures to legalize cannabis for adults, expand the state’s restrictive low-THC medical program and impose new restrictions on hemp.

The Texas House of Representatives passed a series of bills last session to decriminalize marijuana, facilitate expungements and allow chronic pain patients to access medical cannabis as an opioid alternative. But those proposals ultimately stalled out in the Senate, which has been a theme for cannabis reform measures in the conservative legislature in recent sessions.

The House passed similar cannabis decriminalization proposals during the two prior legislative sessions, in 2021 and 2019.

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Meanwhile, last November, voters in three Texas cities—Dallas, Lockhart and Bastrop—approved local marijuana decriminalization ballot initiatives at the polls.

In addition to those three cities, jurisdictions across the Lone Star state have stopped targeting marijuana use in recent years, including Austin, Denton, Elgin, Harker Heights, Killeen and San Marcos.

Advocates also scored another win in San Marcos in July after a Texas district judge dismissed a lawsuit from the state’s Republican attorney general that sought to overturn a local decriminalization ordinance in that city.

Meanwhile, the state attorney general filed a lawsuit in November seeking to overturn the local marijuana decriminalization ordinance in Dallas that voters passed at the ballot.

Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has similarly sought to block the reform in Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin and Denton.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has lashed out against the municipal cannabis reform efforts.

“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 legislate to work to make sure that the state, as a state, will pass some of the law.”

He said it would lead to “chaos” and create an “unworkable system” for voters in individual cities to be “picking and choosing” the laws they want abide by under state statute.

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.

Paxton had used more inflammatory rhetoric when his office announced that it was suing the five cities over their local laws decriminalizing marijuana, vowing to overrule the “anarchy” of “pro-crime extremists” who advocated for the reform.

In 2023, Ground Game Texas, the group behind many of the local reform efforts, released a report that looked at the impacts of the marijuana reform laws. It found that the measures will keep hundreds of people out of jail, even as they have led to blowback from law enforcement in some cities. The initiatives have also driven voter turnout by being on the ballot, the report said.

Another cannabis decriminalization measure that went before voters in San Antonio in 2023 was overwhelmingly defeated, but that proposal also included unrelated provisions to prevent enforcement of abortion restrictions.

Separately, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) released a report last. year advising that the state’s limited medical marijuana system “does not provide for statewide access for patients” and recommending that the number of licensed dispensaries be significantly expanded to meet demand.

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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

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