Possession of marijuana is an offense in Texas, police will arrest those in possession, but the arrested person may never be taken to court or prosecuted.This bizzare situation is being blamed on the Texas Legislature which passed a law legalizing agricultural production of hemp.Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton said in a statement on Tuesdaythat the legal standard to initiate a criminal investigation and make arrests has not changed, but “we will not be able to prosecute marijuana violations without a lab test quantifying the concentration of the once prohibited, and now regulated substance in hemp and marijuana – Tetrohydrocannbinol (THC).”“Pending misdemeanor charges will be dismissed with the opportunity for our office to prosecute if, and when, an acceptable lab test becomes available. We will continue to offer our marijuana diversion program which qualifies successful participants’ charges for expunction.Felony charges will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and will be prioritized for testing and prosecution.”The passage of HB 1325 by the Texas Legislature significantly impacts the enforcement and prosecution of the State’s existing criminal marijuana laws, according to Middleton.“The problem isn’t with the law and the State’s desire to legalize agricultural hemp production. The issue is that the law was enacted immediately and without any of the infrastructure in place to regulate the legal production of hemp, nor the ability of the State’s own scientific labs to distinguish between what’s legal and what’s not. Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of the law renders prosecution of marijuana offenses impossible until the infrastructure and scientific laboratories are capable of performing the analysis necessary to distinguish hemp from marijuana,” he said.“We support local law enforcement and have reached out to our law enforcement partners with that message. Public safety is our top priority. We will not sit idly by while drugs infiltrate our schools. And drug runners will not go free if they are moving loads of marijuana through our county. It will just take extraordinary resources to prosecute those cases until the infrastructure and laboratory testing is readily available. We are actively researching a solution and once we find one that is reliable and affordable, it will be business as usual.”Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that will legalize industrial hemp and CBD products. The new law in Texas, signed by Abott on June 10 and went into effect immediately, allows farmers in the state to cultivate hemp for industrial purposes, while also clarifying which CBD products are legal.The new laws define hemp as containing less than .3% THC and marijuana as anything above that threshold. According to drug testing experts, new equipment is required to detect such low levels of THC.Citing mandatory testing and the inadequate testing labs, DAs tend to avoid prosecution of misdemeanor possession of marijuana.The district attorney’s office in Tarrant County has dismissed 235 marijuana misdemeanors that have been filed since June 10, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.