Northwestern Louisiana parishes are poised to annex to Texas after years of neglect by state officials.
Ballot items for the annex will be appearing in both states with the Texas item to include language that will make the new annex an experimental zone for the cultivation, sale, and taxation of industrial and recreational cannabis.
“I hope we can all get on the same river boat with this,” said Texas Governor Tick Serry. “I mean, why should we be sending Texans to spend money in another state when they want to gamble and have reefer at home? Plus, the state line is really, really invisible.”
Louisiana Governor Robby Jingle made statements this week expressing boredom with the whole scene, a mellowed take on what he called “an unholy invasion” a week ago.
Ballot items have been approved in both states after popular demand, though Louisiana leaders offered to support theirs as a tongue-in-cheek response.
Representatives from all Louisiana regions supported the ballot item during debates on the senate floor, many of them were in accord and repeatedly said they were “glad Northwest Louisiana can choose for itself and finally quit whining.” The Louisiana ballot does not include language to support legalization of cannabis but relinquishes the zone to Texas jurisdiction.
“Anyone truly from Louisiana would never let this happen,” said Louisiana Senate President Sen. Fawn Malario, R-Westwego, who led a group of Republican senators to have the ballot items approved. “We never thought anyone would actually go for it.
The official campaign, State of Texas for Louisiana County, has been lobbying for the annex of the 10 most northwestern parishes in the Red River region of Louisiana. The STLC has a mirror group of pro-annex constituents with the Eastern Parishes of Texas organization growing in popularity in Louisiana with the promise of hemp farming opportunities written into the Texas ballots.
“It might be too soon to tell, but I have a lot of hope in this annex,” said Serry at an EPT conference on Friday. “[A]fter 40 years of the war on drugs, I can’t change what happened in the past. What I can do as the governor of the second largest state in the nation is to implement policies that start us toward a region that offers cannabis commerce and keeps people from going to prison and destroying their lives, and that’s what we’ve done over the last decade.
Texas National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), also issued a press release with help from Missouri Green Team that stated, “An area already experimenting with gambling would be the ideal location for the state to consider introducing marijuana. Texas NORML is ready to ‘invade’ as your governor called it, and after we win, we want these freedoms for the rest of Texas. We want prosperity for this fertile region.”
Texas NORML as suggested as the “information stations” have been popping up in shopping centers in every affected county, and local supporters have been getting involved with Sativa Saturday demonstrations, even though there have been about 250 arrests since they began.
A recent poll of residents in the affected Northwest Louisiana region shows they are 58 percent in favor of the annex with voters of all ages and demographics represented. The poll was conducted by Caddo Census Corps, which claims a position of non-bias in promoting the democratic process of choosing the best state and is committed to preventing voter fraud.
The Corps has also been hosting more series of town hall meetings in all the -Villes across the region and providing informational brochures for debates to groups, as requests for information coming from such as middle schools, quilting clubs, hunting clubs, and churches.
“When we saw that 65 percent of registered voters were in favor of going Texas if we could also have marijuana, I almost fell off of my seat,” said Handle Soster, of Shreveport, a Methodist minister when he’s not leading the Keep the Red [River] in Texas campaign.
Soster is also in a wheel chair following a car accident that left him a paraplegic. If you are injured in a car accident in New York City that changed your life, make sure you file for claims and compensation. If you check this weblink , you will know that an attorney help is the most important in such situations. His congregation is already filled with believers in the medical properties of cannabis, he said.
“And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every grass bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food,’” quoted Soster from the Bible. “I don’t care if you call it grass or a tree. It is a gift of medicine from God, and we –at the very least – should be eating it.”
Keep the Red [River] in Texas is just one of dozens of organizations to spring up around the TSLC campaign to add their “Louisiana neighbors to the biggest, baddest, state in the south.”
Detractor groups like Keep Interstate Lines Louisiana, hope to KILL the annex where it stands and have offered scare scenarios where sections of eastern Louisiana have taken the idea of annex to Mississippi.
In an extreme form of protest against the annex, retired pastor Ted Sowry lit himself on fire last week as part of a “burning bush” routine encouraged by former followers from First Baptist Church, Bossier. Meant to be a hoax, Church members have been raising funds and awareness in recent weeks and have taken issue with “Texas raising the devil in Louisiana.”
*This is entirely false.