In Texas Hash Brownies Can Get You 10 Years to Life, No Matter How Crappy They Are

Yesterday a
lawyer for Jacob Lavoro, the Texas teenager who could face a
prison
sentence of 10 years to life after being caught with a pound
and a half of hash brownies and cookies, told reporters that lab
tests of those baked goods found they contained just 2.5 grams of
THC, marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient. That’s one-quarter
of what Colorado’s marijuana regulators consider a standard dose.
Marijuana-infused edibles sold to recreational customers in
Colorado contain up to 100 milligrams of THC per package. In other
words, Lavoro made some pretty shitty hash brownies, barely
psychoactive even if you ate the entire batch.

But none of that matters under Texas law, which treats the
brownies and cookies as if they consisted entirely of hash oil. The
other ingredients (flour, eggs, sugar, chocolate) are counted as
“adulterants and dilutants,” the weight of which is included when
calculating the seriousness of the offense. Worse, the state’s
penalties
for possessing hash oil are much more severe than its penalties for
possessing marijuana buds, irrespective of THC content. Even if a
pound of buds contains more THC than a pound of hash oil—which is
entirely possible, given the high potency of some marijuana strains
and the wide variability in hash potency—the buds will earn you a
minimum sentence of six months, compared to 10 years for the
hash oil. The maximum sentence for that much hash oil, or for a
pound of anything containing any amount of hash oil, is life.

“I’m scared,” Lavoro said yesterday. “Very scared.
I’m 19 years old and still have a whole life ahead of me. Take that
into account.”

Not to worry, says Williamson County First District
Attorney Mark Brunner, who in May explained
to a puzzled world the bizarre workings of Texas drug laws.
“As prosecutors,” he said then, “we are bound by what the law is,
not what the law should be or could be.” But yesterday Williamson
said his office has no intention of sending Lavoro to prison for
the rest of his life. In fact, it has offered him a plea deal under
which he would serve no time behind bars. In practice, then,
possessing a pound and a half of extremely weak hash brownies and
cookies is punishable by either 0 or 10 years in prison, depending
on whether the defendant decides to exercise his constitutional
right to a trial.

Lavoro’s lawyer, Jack Holmes, said he rejected the plea
deal because he worried that a technical violation of its terms
would send him to prison. Holmes also thinks he has a good shot at
getting the whole case thrown out. He
argues that the cops who found the illegal baked goods at the
apartment in Round Rock where Lavoro was staying searched the place
illegally, gaining entrance by claiming to be maintenance workers,
at which point they claimed to smell marijuana.

Although Brunner wants us to know he is not the sort of
crazy drug warrior who thinks Lavoro deserves a long prison
sentence, he defends threatening the hapless 19-year-old baker with
that outcome. “If this was just some college kid
experimenting in his friend’s Easy-Bake Oven, with a reefer’s worth
of pot and a bunch of brownies, that’d be different,” Brunner told
reporters. “This man was trying to run a business, allegedly.” Just
like hundreds of state-licensed marijuana entrepreneurs in Colorado
and Washington. To be fair, they are much better at it. But while
Lavoro’s lack of professionalism might be cause to shun his
products, it hardly justifies locking him in a cage.