Texas marijuana: Let’s talk on the Lone Star State’s ‘palpable personal freedom problem’

Talkin’ Texas marijuana: When Brad Bogus lived in the Lone Star State, he never really felt at peace in the Lone Star State.

Texas, he believes, has a “palpable personal freedom problem.”

“You see that we can do open-carry on campus now in Austin, but yet you can’t use cannabis,” Bogus says. “We have this idea that Texas is super-free, kind of an outlaw state, but it’s actually 49th in the U.S. for personal freedoms and Colorado is second. It’s a total flip flop.”

A couple of weeks ago, Bogus left Texas for Colorado, where he now serves as the general manager of The Cannabist. The new GM joins The Cannabist Show to share his experiences with cannabis in Texas, a state where marijuana possession and use are heavily restricted.

“It’s very different, depending on which county you’re in,” Bogus says.

Bogus hails from a deeply religious and conservative region that’s “night and day” from a more liberal city such as Austin. However, the experiences of purchasing weed north of Houston at the age of 15 or in Austin at the age of 30 weren’t that different, he says.

“You take odd precautions for things if you’re just trying to pick up something and take it home with you,” he says. “You might put it in the trunk, you might wrap it up in a whole bunch of stuff, bury it underneath groceries. There’s all these weird little things that you’ll do because you’re just afraid all the time in the back of your head you might get caught, you might get busted.”

Watch the full episode of The Cannabist Show