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Austin hemp entrepreneur Shayda Torabi is looking at a year filled with uncertainty.

For the six years they've been in business, Torabi and her two sisters have operated Restart, their hemp dispensary, in a modest neighborhood in North Austin within an entirely lawful framework — evolving as the laws changed, and staying comfortably and legally off the radar of state lawmakers who authorized the sale of consumable hemp in Texas in 2019.

But all of that is about to change.

Some Texas lawmakers have marked hemp dispensaries for what could be some radical changes in regulations next year. Since their products were legalized, there's been an overnight proliferation of shops offering baked goods, gummies, oils, and smokable buds made with cannabis derivatives — some containing small amounts of psychoactives.

Once the darling of a burgeoning wellness industry, the purveyors of legal cannabis products now face questions from critics who remain unconvinced of the safety of their products and want tighter regulations — or even partial bans.

Consumable hemp products come in forms that include smokable vapes and flower buds, oils and creams, baked goods, drinks, gummies and candies.

They contain industrial hemp or hemp-derived cannabinoids, including the non-intoxicating cannabidiol known as CBD. They may not contain more than 0.3% concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating part of the cannabis plant that comes in forms known as delta-8, delta-9 and THCA.

The difference in the legal and illegal products lies in the plants from which they come. Hemp and marijuana plants are both cannabis plants. Marijuana plants have high THC. Hemp has low THC.

Texas is one of about a dozen states that has not legalized marijuana in any form for broad use.

But thousands of dispensaries in Texas are selling hemp-derived products that look, taste and sometimes intoxicate similar to their more potent sibling. They've sprung up in recent years through loopholes in state and federal law that allow them to sell their low-THC products with no age limits, loose and inconsistent testing requirements, and no limit on the number of licenses allowed in the state. And it's happening amid a series of oft-changing statutes and court decisions that throw retailers, advocates, police, prosecutors and parents into confusion over what's actually legal to buy, sell, possess and consume.

Since consumable hemp was legalized in Texas , the number of retail registrations for consumable hemp products has exploded in the state.

In 2020, the first year the Texas Department of State Health Services began registering retailers, some 1,948 retailers were actively registered. By 2023, that number had jumped to 8,343. And in the first four months of 2024, the state has already seen more than 7,700 active registrations.

Last month, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick ordered the Texas Senate to look into potentially banning the hemp products that contain THC, and investigate strict regulations for retailers across Texas. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.

There is no similar charge for the more business-friendly Texas House, which voted last year to expand the state's medical marijuana program in legislation that also would have regulated the dispensaries.

That bill never got a vote in the Senate, the result of a political maneuvering over unrelated issues and a decided lack of interest in expanding weed laws in the conservative upper chamber.

Because it's a Patrick priority, it's likely to come up when lawmakers convene in January for the regular legislative session. Meanwhile, Congress is getting ready to reauthorize the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, also known as the Farm Bill, that instituted widespread changes for the hemp industry, including the authorization of the sale of intoxicating hemp-derived products.

So far, the latest U.S. House and Senate versions of that bill — which both propose to loosen barriers for industrial hemp farmers — leave out any changes that would address either the increasing calls by critics for limits on dispensaries or pushes by advocates for wider access. But further changes could come before the legislation gets a vote later this year.

Torabi, the Restart brand owner and president of the Texas Hemp Coalition, said she is looking for some clarity and support from both Austin and Washington.

“We're now seeing the hemp conversation not just in Texas, but nationally, show the pathway for how we can access this plant and really, ultimately help consumers who are seeking relief with cannabis products,” Torabi said. “We're watching and waiting to see what happens next.”

The state does not limit the number of dispensary registrations or hemp licenses it allows. Health officials conduct random testing for the presence of heavy metals, pathogens, pesticides, solvents and the concentration of THC.

Retailers must pay an annual fee of $155 per location. License holders are on the hook for additional required state fees.

Torabi's cannabis dispensary sells hemp-derived gummies, oils, edibles and smokable plant buds that are marketed as having wellness benefits like decreased depression or stress relief. While federal drug officials have approved the use of a seizure medicine that contains CBD, most of the hemp-derived products are not regulated by the federal government.

Her products contain either CBD, or low-concentration cannabinoid THC derivatives like THCA, delta-9 and delta-8. Some products are combinations of those.

Some regulations that would keep her industry legit would be welcome, Torabi said.

“It is the wild, wild West out there, and I can imagine you'd throw a stone in any direction and find not only new CBD products but the expansion of psychoactive cannabinoids,” said Torabi, who sells both types. “And it's a double-edged sword. It's great that we're giving access to these products where the consumers are, but the lack of regulation is really the crux of the conversation.”

The presence of bad actors who could trigger regulations that drag down legitimate operations not only threaten the very existence of her business if they cause a total ban on her products, Torabi said.

They also ruin the reputation of people like her and the products she passionately believes in after she used CBD, at her mother's urging, to deal with chronic pain after she was hit by a car as a pedestrian in downtown Austin years ago, she said.

And while it's true that consuming low-quality, unregulated products from unscrupulous retailers can be uncomfortable or unsafe for users, the customers coming to Restart to purchase high-quality CBD and low-dose THC products consistently tell her how they have helped them with issues like inflammation, insomnia, depression and similar benefits, Torabi said.

“We share the same concerns as Patrick, which is why we really do try to self-regulate as much as possible because we see where there can be malintent or taking what the intent was and twisting it,” she said. “It's a challenging place to be in because I do empathize with the state's concerns, but the transformative conversations that we're having on a daily basis are just so powerful, and those shouldn't be overlooked.”

The wellness benefits claimed by purveyors of hemp-derived consumables have been neither endorsed nor refuted by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration. Federal drug enforcement officials recently signaled that marijuana, would soon lose its status as a Schedule 1 narcotic — which are drugs that are highly addictive but have no medicinal value — and become eligible for broad research on its medicinal effects.

That's not an opening for legal pot or any other changes in Texas, but it does bolster the argument that cannabis in whatever form it takes can have uses beyond industrial rope and intoxicating party drugs, advocates say.

“We're simply asking Dan Patrick to not eliminate the market but to further regulate and lean on organizations like ours, and to lean on leading operators like myself at Restart, to really understand and become educated,” Torabi said.

The state's miniscule medical marijuana program, the Compassionate Use Program run by the Texas Department of Public Safety, has about 12,000 enrollees and a short list of conditions that would qualify a resident to buy low doses of marijuana in either edible or oil form.

Texans with a variety of conditions — such as epilepsy, autism, cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder — can access cannabis oil from marijuana plants with less than 1% THC. Medical cannabis can treat the symptoms of some of these diseases or reduce the side effects of other treatments, such as alleviating the nausea and loss of appetite associated with chemotherapy or reducing nightmares in patients with PTSD.

It is legal to buy and use most smokable hemp products such as flower or vape cartridges with CBD, THCA and delta-8. The smokable version of delta-9, a hemp derivative which has a higher THC level than delta-8, is illegal in Texas.

All hemp derivatives can be legally sold in oils, creams, gummies, sodas, candies, coffee and other consumables that retailers like Torabi stock in storefronts, convenience stores, breweries, coffee shops, trailers and online.

Consumable hemp was made legalby the federal Farm Bill in 2018 and in Texas, the following year by House Bill 1325, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law.

Critics say that because consumable hemp stores have been allowed to sell their products without stringent testing requirements, age limits or other regulations, they pose a health risk and their extreme growth in numbers has undercut access by the patients who truly need cannabis for health reasons.

They want lawmakers to enact age restrictions, on-site or in-state testing requirements, regulations on the ingredients and changes to how the psychoactive ingredients in the consumable hemp products are measured by state regulators.

States like Colorado, where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal, are putting tighter restrictions like these on those products as a way to reign in access and force more health and safety accountability on the consumable hemp industry.

Many of the current retailers, including Torabi, put some of these restrictions on themselves. All of Restart's non-smokeable products are produced in Texas, including some handcrafted in her hometown of Austin. Her shop does not sell to anyone under the age of 21 for delta-8 and delta-9 products and 18 for CBD products.

Nico Richardson, CEO of Texas Original, the leading medical cannabis provider in the state, is frustrated that his operation, which his medical marijuana patients depend on for relief from symptoms of cancers and nerve disorders among other ills, is hindered by enormous regulation while businesses like Torabi's are not.

For example, since he can only store his inventory in one location under Texas law, it gets ferried back and forth across the state at Richardson's company's expense. If a patient in the medical marijuana program in El Paso doesn't pick up an order, Richardson's staff has to drive to that city and bring that order of medical grade cannabis product back to Austin — a huge expense as well as an enormous waste of staff resources, he said.

“On the way, my driver passes probably 1,500 hemp dispensaries dealing delta-8 and delta-9 with no restrictions, and it's everywhere in the state,” Richardson said. “Am I upset about that? Yes. I think it's absolutely horrendous.”

Texas Original is one of two medical marijuana providers in Texas and serves the vast majority of the patients on the state program, Richardson said.

“You have patients in Texas that have gone through the process in the compassionate use program to get clean, well-tested, well-regulated medicine that is safe. That's what they're coming into the program for, and that's what we're trying to provide them,” Richardson said.

But that system will not survive if the hemp industry is not reigned in, he said. People are too easily convinced that all consumable hemp products are safe because they can buy them in the gas station or because they were at some point tested before they were sold, he said.

“It is complete and utter gaslighting,” Richardson said.

Lawmakers have instituted regulations beyond basic licensing fees and requirements in place, such as a restriction that the products can't contain more than 0.3% THC by weight and that retailers have records showing that the products have been tested to confirm those numbers. But there is no guidance, for example, on how recently a product should have been tested, even though the amount of THC in a product can increase over time due to degradation and environmental factors.

Short of seeing a shutdown of the entire hemp industry, Richardson said tighter industry regulations “are long overdue.”

“It was never the intent here in Texas, and it certainly was never the intent for the 2018 federal Farm Bill, that you'd have a massive industry of — let's call it what it is — intoxicating hemp derivatives. It's marijuana by another name,” he said. “That's certainly not how the system was supposed to run.”

Near the end of May, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee will hear public testimony about the issue. Both Richardson and Torabi plan to be there.

Torabi envisions a movement that would join people like her and Richardson — currently at odds in the fight — to craft a regulatory framework in Texas that allows access to all cannabis products, from low-dose CBD to medical grade pot to maybe even recreational legalization.

But what Torabi sees now is an opportunity for the pro-cannabis community to be a national leader in treating the plant as a tool for wellness, in whatever form it can be delivered.

“It's not like we're legalizing cannabis, and it's going to be a free-for-all, and there's no rules and checkpoints — that's absolutely not what we're asking for,” Torabi said. “We're just asking for inclusion, legitimacy and the acceptance that this is not something that you can keep dismissing as a conversation.”

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A third person with ties to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar's bribery case has pleaded guilty, according to a recently unsealed plea agreement, after the South Texas Democrat was accused of accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank.

Irada Akhoundova pleaded guilty to unlawfully acting as an agent of the Azerbaijani government and a state-run oil company, a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, on May 1, according to the plea deal first reported by the San Antonio Express-News. Akhoundova admitted to facilitating a $60,000 payment to Imelda Cuellar, the congressman's wife, who was also indicted last month.

For nearly 20 years, Akhoundova has served as the president of the Houston-Baku Sister City Association, a nonprofit that builds ties between the Texas city and Azerbaijan's capital, according to her LinkedIn profile. The plea agreement describes Akhoundova as an active member of the Texas Azerbaijani-American community. The court filing states that she served as the director of a U.S. affiliate of a Baku-based company, from approximately 2014 to 2017.

Akhoundova is the third person publicly known to have pleaded guilty as part of the federal investigation into the Texas congressman. Cuellar's former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and another consultant, Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, pleaded guilty to charges that they helped launder more than $200,000 in bribes from a Mexican bank, according to court records.

Cuellar and his wife were indicted on April 30 on charges of accepting payments from Azerbaijan's state-run oil and gas company. The couple allegedly laundered the payments through fake consulting contracts to shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, according to the indictment.

In exchange, the Laredo congressman allegedly pushed U.S. policy in favor of Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet country that borders Iran and Russia on the Caspian Sea. Cuellar allegedly helped add language to defense spending legislation to prioritize ties to countries in the region, including with Azerbaijan.

Cuellar also allegedly took money from a retail Mexican bank, Banco Azteca, and influenced members of the executive branch to work around an anti-money laundering policy that threatened the bank's interests, according to the indictment.

According to Akhoundova's plea agreement, Imelda Cuellar was acting as the owner of a consulting company, when she allegedly submitted falsified invoices to a Texas-based affiliate of an Azerbaijani company — run by Akhoundova. Cuellar received the payment in December 2014, despite not having done any work for Akhoundova's company.

“Akhoundova believed that disbursing the $60,000 was in the interest of Oil Company 1 and the Government of Azerbaijan,” the plea agreement read, referring to the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The plea deal also outlines other actions Akhoundova undertook on behalf of the Azerbaijani government, including the creation of a U.S-based company.

In 2020, Akhoundova received emails from an Azerbaijani government agency to organize a campaign in the U.S. to influence the U.S. public's opinion about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan had been engaged in a long-running border dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave made up of largely ethnic Armenians, until Azerbaijan forcibly retook control of the territory last year. The conflict had been a significant roadblock to peace in the region since the fall of the Soviet Union, with European, American and Russian governments struggling with the issues for decades.

Akhoundova agreed to testify before any judicial proceedings, including a grand jury, and provide documents related to the federal government's investigation into Cuellar, according to the plea agreement. She faces up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine — the maximum sentence for the violation she pleaded guilty to.

The Cuellars have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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The Texas Supreme Court is considering whether to take up a case that could have Alabama-esque impacts on in vitro fertilization in Texas.

What began as a Denton divorce has grown into a larger battle over whether a frozen embryo can be defined as a person. The court has not yet said whether it will take up the case, which centers on three frozen embryos created by Caroline and Gaby Antoun.

Before beginning IVF, the couple signed an agreement saying Gaby Antoun, the husband, would get any remaining frozen embryos in case of a divorce. A trial court and appeals court have upheld the contract, citing long-standing legal precedent that embryos are quasi-property that can be governed by a contract.

But Caroline Antoun, the wife, argues that Texas' new abortion laws require frozen embryos to be treated as people and handled through the child custody process instead.

“Now that Roe is no longer law, the Court has the opportunity to reclassify embryos as unborn children rather than property, and to, after far too long, recognize and protect the rights of those unborn children and their parents,” her lawyers, who declined to comment for this story, wrote in their petition for review to the Texas Supreme Court.

Patrick Wright, the attorney representing the husband, said this case isn't about abortion.

“It's a case where two people got together and were planning for their family, and they entered into an agreement,” Wright said. “This is a family issue and if — and it's a big if — the courts are getting involved, they'd be doing essentially the thing that has been complained about for years, which is adding something that's not there.”

Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos qualify as people under the state's wrongful death statute, leading fertility clinics to halt their work until the legislature stepped in and granted temporary protections.

While the details are different, legal experts and fertility doctors say the results of this Texas case could be similar.

“Recognizing ‘personhood' status for a frozen embryo, as requested by Petitioner, would upend IVF in Texas,” the American Society for Reproductive Medicine wrote in an amicus brief. It would “inject untenable uncertainty into whether and on what terms IVF clinics can continue to operate in Texas.”

Legal precedent

For almost as long as there has been IVF, there have been legal battles over how to handle the frozen embryos in case of divorce, death or disagreement.

In the earliest case, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that frozen embryos were neither persons nor property, but instead were in an “interim category that entitles them to special respect because of their potential for human life.” Without a written contract in place, the court sided with the ex-husband, who wanted the embryos destroyed.

“The court suggests that the right not to procreate, because you cannot not be a genetic parent once it happens, is irrevocable,” said Sonia Suter, a law professor at the George Washington University. “Whereas the ex-wife could theoretically be a genetic parent, so we haven't precluded her right to be a parent.”

This issue came before the Texas courts in 2006, when a man named Randy Roman wanted the courts to uphold a signed agreement saying the embryos would be destroyed in case of divorce; his ex-wife wanted to use the embryos to have a child.

A Texas appeals court noted the “emerging majority view that written embryo agreements … are valid and enforceable,” and found that honoring these contracts “best serves the existing public policy of this State and the interests of the parties.”

In siding with Randy Roman, the judges invited lawmakers to clarify this issue if they saw fit; in the nearly two decades since, the Legislature has not taken it up. The Texas Supreme Court declined to review Roman v. Roman, so years later, when the Antouns went to the Denton County courthouse, this was the most recent state court precedent.

The Antouns married in 2014 and began IVF five years later. They implanted three embryos, resulting in two children and one miscarriage, and three remained frozen. The couple separated in 2021 and divorced in 2022. While they successfully mediated the other aspects of their divorce, including custody of their two children, they ended up going to court over the frozen embryos.

That hearing was on June 29, 2022, five days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Caroline Antoun's lawyers asked the judge to delay the case until the impact of the ruling was clearer, but the judge declined and upheld the contract, awarding the embryos to Gaby Antoun.

Two months later, Texas' near-total abortion ban went into effect. That same day, Caroline Antoun asked the court for a new trial, contending the law had changed in a way that would change the outcome of her case. When that wasn't granted, she appealed.

Caroline Antoun's lawyers argue that Roman v. Roman was invalidated by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and the embryos should no longer be treated as property. They cite the new abortion law, which defines an “unborn child” as “an individual living member of the homo sapiens species from fertilization until birth, including the entire embryonic and fetal stages of development.”

“Because fertilization has occurred, the embryos are unborn children and thus people as Texas defines them,” her lawyers wrote in a brief. “They are unborn children and should be treated as having all the rights and constitutional protections of children.”

Her lawyers also argued that treating frozen embryos as property was a return to the days of slavery, before “the ownership of persons became an issue relegated to history.”

“That is, until the Texas Legislature accidentally revived the conception of owning people by legislatively defining life to begin at a time antecedent to pregnancy and gestation via IVF,” they wrote, later saying, “To treat a class of persons, here embryos, as lesser humans by virtue of an immutable trait, is to repeat the mistakes of our forefathers.”

Gaby Antoun's lawyers argue that the Dobbs decision did not change anything about the legal status of frozen embryos, nor the contracts that have historically governed them.

“If they say that you can't sign these agreements, then we have a problem,” Wright said. “Because now you're saying that people can't validly contract to create their families, in their own way, with their own choices, and now the state is imposing on decisions that families are making.”

The 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth agreed, ruling that Caroline Antoun's arguments were “a classic example of taking a definition out of its legislatively created context and using it in a context that the legislature did not intend.”

“Dobbs held that the United States Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion,” the judges wrote. “Dobbs did not determine the rights of cryogenically stored embryos outside the human body before uterine implantation. Dobbs is not law ‘applicable' to this case, and thus its pronouncement did not justify a new trial.”

Caroline Antoun then appealed to the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court. The court asked each side to brief the case, but has not yet said whether it will take the issue up.

Future of IVF

If the Texas Supreme Court were to find that frozen embryos are people and should have all the same rights as a living child, it would raise “unimaginable” questions about the realities of IVF, Suter said.

“Even if both parties agree that they want the embryos disposed, if they're a person, can you do that?” she said. “Can you kill your kids? Can you leave them in the freezer, or donate them to research?”

Such a ruling would also throw into question any contracts fertility clinics have their clients sign, making cryopreservation “legally, financially and logistically untenable,” the American Society for Reproductive Medicine wrote in its brief.

Without the ability to freeze the embryos, fertility clinics would have to either transfer all the embryos at once, or fertilize only one egg at a time, ASMR wrote in its brief. Either option “would make IVF much more burdensome, risky, expensive and less effective,” the group wrote.

And, like in Alabama, many clinics may decide to take the legally safer route and just pause all services while the uncertainty plays out, said Clare Ryan, a family law professor at the University of Alabama law school.

“Whatever one's views are about when life begins, which are deeply held views, I think it's pretty fair to say that our current legal system as we have it just can't sustain this kind of change without a complete rethinking of how it works,” Ryan said.

Texas Right to Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group, called for the court to rule that frozen embryos are people and, in case of divorce, should be given all the same rights as living children. They rejected the idea that this would lead to a shutdown of IVF in Texas.

“Because this case would only set precedent for custody disputes of frozen unborn children in divorce cases, a decision abrogating Roman would have a much smaller impact than the Alabama case,” they wrote in an amicus brief.

In their briefs, Gaby Antoun's lawyers argue this is a question best left to the Legislature, an idea Ryan echoes.

“The cases before the courts are so dependent on specific facts of the case, even if the implications extend far beyond it,” she said. “Whereas legislatures … have the ability to look at things more comprehensively and address, if we change this definition, what does that do for all these other areas of law.”

After the Alabama ruling, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signaled his support for families that get pregnant through IVF, and said he had “no doubt” the Legislature would take steps to ensure that remained an option.

“Texas is a pro-life state, and we want to do everything possible that we can to maintain Texas being a pro-life state,” Abbott told CNN at the time. “But at the very same time … we as a state want to ensure that we promote life, we bring more life into the world and we empower parents to be able to have more children.”

IVF gets “exceptionalized,” Suter said, in conservative circles, especially as more families come to rely on assistive technologies to conceive. The Alabama legislature moved swiftly to restore access to the procedure after the court ruling — but many legal experts say this temporary legislation didn't address the significant questions that remain.

“This issue, more than any other, really, highlights the tension between pro-birth policies and ones that are more focused on treating every embryo as a person,” Ryan said. “Going down the path of treating cryopreserved embryos as persons will inevitably reduce the number of people who can get pregnant and have children through IVF.”

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