Nana’s Felony: Guns, Tigers, and Texas’s War on Weed

Greg Abbott doesn’t care about public health. If he did, he’d be chasing guns, not gummies.

Texas loses 480 kids a year to firearms. Cannabis kills zero. Zero. If Abbott were actually running a public safety operation, that math would matter. Instead he’s spending political capital criminalizing a plant while doing absolutely nothing about the thing that’s actually killing children. That’s not a safety policy. That’s a hobby.

Here’s what he’s also ignoring: cannabis works. People manage chronic pain, insomnia, and anxiety with it, and they do it without risking their lives. Picture an elderly Texan on five medications, stable, sleeping fine, pain managed — and now, thanks to Abbott, back on Vicodin because her gummies got outlawed. Seniors forget doses. It happens. Double up on Vicodin by accident and you’re looking at an ER visit, or a funeral. Double up on a gummy and you’re looking at missing Jeopardy because you fell asleep on the couch. One of those is a public health crisis. The other is Tuesday.

And let’s talk about freedom, since Texas won’t shut up about it. Open containers are legal in plenty of situations here. You can carry a gun with no permit. You can — I promise this is real — legally own a tiger, grandfathered in from before the federal ban. But a woman with a sleep gummy is a felon.

So to recap: Bubba, cruising down the highway with a loaded gun, a bottle of Jack, and a tiger in the truck bed, is a law-abiding citizen. Nana, with an edible for her insomnia, is a criminal.

This isn’t about safety. It never was. It’s about who gets to be watched and who gets to be trusted — and that’s the oldest trick in the drug-war book. Cannabis prohibition has always doubled as a pretext to police Black and brown men, and Abbott knows it. It’s a low-effort, high-yield excuse for cops who’d rather hit a quota than do actual police work.

Abbott likes the power. He likes handing out a manufactured crime instead of chasing a real one. He just needs everyone to believe it’s about health.

It’s not. It’s about hegemony with a badge.