Ah, Texas. The land of cowboy hats, big oil, bigger egos, and, let’s be honest, some of the most embarrassingly backward legislation this side of the Rio Grande. If you haven’t heard the latest, allow me to light it up for you: the Texas GOP is cracking down on cannabis. That’s right. In a state where you can openly carry a firearm capable of shredding a deer (euphemism for school child) into ground meat, you can now get in serious legal trouble for eating a plant.

The supposed justification for this crackdown? According to state Republicans, it’s to protect people from themselves. One example cited—a man who ate too many edibles, wandered onto train tracks, and was hit—has become their go-to scare tactic. Tragic? Yes. But statistically relevant? Not even close. How many people die each year from alcohol-related accidents? Drunk driving alone kills over 13,000 Americans annually. And that’s not even scratching the surface when we talk about alcohol-fueled sexual assaults, bar brawls, domestic violence, and those oops pregnancies that turn into lifelong trauma.

But weed? Nah. Let’s ban that because someone made some bad decisions in life.

Let me be blunt (pun absolutely intended): this isn’t about public safety. This is about control. It’s about telling adults what they can and cannot put into their own bodies while ignoring the real dangers that ravage our communities daily. If safety were truly the concern, we’d be having a very different conversation in Texas. One that includes terms like “universal background checks,” “red flag laws,” and “assault weapons bans.”

You know, because the number one cause of death for children in the United States is now guns. Not cancer. Not car accidents. Guns. (Look it up.)

And let that sink in.

And yet, not one whisper about banning firearms in the Lone Star State. Why? Because “It’s in the Constitution,” they scream, gripping their semi-automatic security blankets like Linus from Peanuts. Sure. The Second Amendment. Written in 1791. When “arms” meant muskets and “bullets” were balls of lead you packed down a tube with a stick. And let’s not forget the actual text: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…” Where is your well-regulated militia? Who’s doing the regulating? Hobby Lobby? Chick-fil-A? Fox News? (Okay, that last one is partly true, unfortunately.)

If the logic is that we must ban things because they might cause harm, then let’s be consistent. Ban sugar. Ban red meat. Ban fossil fuels. Ban fast food. Ban tanning beds. Ban the NFL. Ban the Cheesecake Factory. Hell, ban stress. Because all of it, in some way, contributes to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and violence.

But of course, none of those things are going to be banned, because they make people money, and this isn’t about harm reduction. It’s about political posturing. It’s about control. It’s about scapegoating the kind of people who prefer to light a joint instead of pound back a fifth of Jack before punching their drywall.

It’s about fear. It’s always about fucking fear.

Meanwhile, the guy quietly smoking in his backyard and listening to the latest Kendrick album is treated like a criminal, while the angry drunk guy with a Glock on his hip and a MAGA hat on his head is called a patriot.

We need to stop pretending this is about morality. The Texas GOP has no moral high ground when they defend an endless flow of firearms while criminalizing a plant that has helped my knee injury feel better in a matter of days rather than weeks. They have no moral authority when they chant “freedom” while micromanaging what consenting adults can ingest. And they have no moral compass when they clutch the Constitution in one hand and a Bible in the other, neither of which they seem to have actually read.

The Jesus I’ve studied didn’t run around Nazareth arresting people for what they smoked. He didn’t write policy that protected weapons while criminalizing healing herbs (in fact, he probably used them). And if he were alive today, I’m pretty sure he’d be far more concerned with the violence in our schools than the THC levels in your brownies.

If Texas really wants to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they need to stop banning cannabis and start doing the hard work of addressing real threats—like guns, poverty, and a government more obsessed with moralizing plant consumption than preventing the next school shooting.

But I won’t hold my breath. Unless, of course, I’m trying not to exhale in front of them, lest they try to arrest me.

Don’t tread on me, my ass.