Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 3
Texas's highest criminal court hears drug-possession and search-and-seizure appeals, so this race matters for cannabis even though no campaign is about it. None of the three candidates has ever served as a judge — two are criminal defence attorneys and one a special assistant attorney general — so there are no published opinions to read, from any of them, on any subject. That is the finding, not a gap in the search. And their silence here is required, not evasive. The Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 5(1)(i), says a judge or judicial candidate shall not "make pledges or promises of conduct in office regarding pending or impending cases, specific classes of cases, specific classes of litigants, or specific propositions of law that would suggest to a reasonable person that the judge is predisposed to a probable decision". Marijuana possession and hemp prosecutions are exactly such a class of cases before this court, so a candidate who answered a cannabis questionnaire the way a legislative candidate does would be risking a breach of that canon. This site therefore does not read their silence the way it reads a legislator's. (Texas Code of Judicial Conduct: www.txcourts.gov/media/1462935/texas-state-code-of-judicial-conduct.pdf)
No record compiled yet. Nothing on cannabis — no vote, bill, statement or endorsement — was found in any source we could read. 2 limits on that search are recorded with it.
What was checked for Thomas Smith, and the limits on it
Checked on 2026-09-18: he is a special assistant attorney general and has not served as a judge, so there are NO published opinions to examine. His campaign site biography was read and carries no statement on drug possession, marijuana, search and seizure or the Fourth Amendment.
Re-read independently on 2026-09-20: his campaign site in full. None of these contains the word cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC or CBD.org — found by search and confirmed to name this candidate before it was attributed to them. 4 pages were read: the homepage, any JavaScript bundle it loads, and the pages linked from it. None contains cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD or Compassionate Use.
⚠️This covers the reachable site, not necessarily the whole site: a page that nothing links to cannot be found this way, and at least one Texas candidate keeps their platform on exactly such a page. It contains no occurrence of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use. When we re-read their Ballotpedia profile on 2026-10-15, it recorded that they had not completed Ballotpedia’s 2026 Candidate Connection survey.
The site's own sitemap was read on 2026-09-21, which reaches pages nothing links to. Their campaign site publishes a sitemap listing 11 page(s), of which 8 were read — the sweep skips assets and archive listings rather than prose — and none of those pages contains cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD or Compassionate Use.
The candidate's own campaign site was found and read on 2026-09-21 at smithfortexas.org — located by search and confirmed to name this candidate before anything was attributed to them. The site publishes a sitemap listing 11 page(s), of which 8 were read, and none of them displays any mention of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD or Compassionate Use.
⚠️This card does not tell you whether this candidate held a seat in an earlier Legislature, but the question is now narrower. Read on 2026-10-15, from each chamber’s own journal: the roll of members-elect that the Texas House Journal prints, district by district, on the first day of every regular session from the 75th Legislature (1997) through the 89th (2025), and every senator the Texas Senate Journal names with a district on the first day of every regular session from the 76th (1999) through the 89th.
For the 89th those are journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY01FINAL.PDF and journals.senate.texas.gov/SJRNL/89R/HTML/89RSJ01-14-F.HTM and every journal read is listed on this site’s corrections page. No one by this candidate’s name appears in any of them. That is narrower than a negative answer. Those rolls name the members seated as each session opened, and in most years the Senate’s names the senators who were not up for election by surname alone, so a member who sat only in earlier sessions, who arrived at a special election and was never named in full on a later first day, or who served under another name would not be found this way.
If this candidate is one of those, there may be a cannabis voting record this site is missing.
Also checked, and read in full on 2026-10-05: this candidate’s Ballotpedia profile at ballotpedia.org/Thomas_Smith_(Texas), which contains no mention of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use.
This card has been corrected. What earlier versions of it said, and what was wrong with them, is published in the corrections log.
No score: this candidate has no recorded vote or bill authorship on a cannabis measure. Silence is not a position, so nothing is inferred from it.
Campaign sites and voter guides checked for Thomas Smith
Pages read in full:
- onyourballot.vote411.org/m/race-detail.do?id=6438465 — sections on the page: Qualifications; Ethics; Equity; Precedent; Philosophy — the question set the local League of Women Voters chapter wrote for this race, read in full by us on 2026-10-06. Not one of its questions asks about cannabis, hemp or drug policy. The candidate answered, in free text of their own, and no answer of theirs contains, on a word boundary, cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, hemp-derived, THC, thc-a, CBD, delta-8, delta-9, cannabinoid, dispensary, decriminalisation, psilocybin, Compassionate Use, consumable hemp, SB 3, Senate Bill 3, HB 1325 or HB 46.
- smithfortexas.org their own site — sections on the page: Read 2026-09-20. No cannabis, marijuana, hemp, THC, CBD or Compassionate Use anywhere on the page.
No record compiled yet. Nothing on cannabis — no vote, bill, statement or endorsement — was found in any source we could read. One limit on that search is recorded with it.
What was checked for Okey Anyiam, and the limits on it
Checked on 2026-09-18: he is a Dallas criminal defence attorney and has not served as a judge, so there are NO published opinions to examine. His Ballotpedia entry, a San Antonio Report profile and Texas Tribune primary coverage carry a general statement of judicial philosophy but no dated statement on cannabis, drug possession or search and seizure.
Also checked, and read in full on 2026-09-18: this candidate's Ballotpedia profile at ballotpedia.org/Okey_Anyiam, including any Candidate Connection survey answers published there, which contains no mention of cannabis, marijuana, hemp, THC or CBD.
Re-read independently on 2026-09-20: his campaign biography and voting-information pages. None of these contains the word cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC or CBD.
Their Ballotpedia profile was read in full on 2026-09-20 at ballotpedia.org/Okey_Anyiam (16919 characters). It contains no occurrence of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use. When we re-read their Ballotpedia profile on 2026-10-15, it recorded that they had not completed Ballotpedia’s 2026 Candidate Connection survey.
⚠️This card does not tell you whether this candidate held a seat in an earlier Legislature, but the question is now narrower. Read on 2026-10-15, from each chamber’s own journal: the roll of members-elect that the Texas House Journal prints, district by district, on the first day of every regular session from the 75th Legislature (1997) through the 89th (2025), and every senator the Texas Senate Journal names with a district on the first day of every regular session from the 76th (1999) through the 89th.
For the 89th those are journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY01FINAL.PDF and journals.senate.texas.gov/SJRNL/89R/HTML/89RSJ01-14-F.HTM and every journal read is listed on this site’s corrections page. No one by this candidate’s name appears in any of them. That is narrower than a negative answer. Those rolls name the members seated as each session opened, and in most years the Senate’s names the senators who were not up for election by surname alone, so a member who sat only in earlier sessions, who arrived at a special election and was never named in full on a later first day, or who served under another name would not be found this way.
If this candidate is one of those, there may be a cannabis voting record this site is missing.
Also checked, and read in full on 2026-10-06: this candidate’s own campaign site at okeyanyiamforjudge.com — 6 pages, reached from the home page’s own links and from the site’s sitemap.xml, each fetched only after its host’s robots.txt had been checked and found to permit it, 4,676 characters of text in all. The site is headed "Okey Anyiam for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals" and names Place 3. The extracted text of those pages contains no occurrence, on a word boundary, of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, Compassionate Use, delta-8, delta-9, dispensary, decriminalize, cannabinoid or psilocybin.
This card has been corrected. What an earlier version of it said, and what was wrong with it, is published in the corrections log.
No score: this candidate has no recorded vote or bill authorship on a cannabis measure. Silence is not a position, so nothing is inferred from it.
Campaign sites and voter guides checked for Okey Anyiam
Pages read in full:
- onyourballot.vote411.org/m/race-detail.do?id=6438465 — sections on the page: Qualifications; Ethics; Equity; Precedent; Philosophy — the question set the local League of Women Voters chapter wrote for this race, read in full by us on 2026-10-06. Not one of its questions asks about cannabis, hemp or drug policy. The candidate answered, in free text of their own, and no answer of theirs contains, on a word boundary, cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, hemp-derived, THC, thc-a, CBD, delta-8, delta-9, cannabinoid, dispensary, decriminalisation, psilocybin, Compassionate Use, consumable hemp, SB 3, Senate Bill 3, HB 1325 or HB 46.
- okeyanyiamforjudge.com their own site — sections on the page: the whole of this candidate's own campaign site as this guide read it — 6 pages, reached from the home page’s own links and from the site’s sitemap.xml, each fetched only after its host’s robots.txt had been checked and found to permit it, 4,676 characters of text in all. This row was built on 2026-10-12 out of the sentence above it in this card's own search log, which named the address and said it had been read while the list beside it did not. It records no reading that the log had not already published.
No source of this candidate’s own is on this card. Everything below was published by someone else. So the absence of a cannabis position here is weaker evidence than it looks: it may mean only that this candidate has not published a platform anywhere we have found, or has published one somewhere we are not permitted to read.
No record compiled yet. Nothing on cannabis — no vote, bill, statement or endorsement — was found in any source we could read. 2 limits on that search are recorded with it.
What was checked for Mark Ash, and the limits on it
Checked on 2026-09-18: he is a criminal defence attorney and has not served as a judge, so there are NO published opinions to examine. Profiles from earlier election cycles were located but none carries a dated cannabis or drug-possession statement for this cycle. The Libertarian Party platform addresses cannabis, but a party document is not an act by this candidate.
Also checked, and read in full on 2026-09-18: this candidate's Ballotpedia profile at ballotpedia.org/Mark_Ash, including any Candidate Connection survey answers published there, which contains no mention of cannabis, marijuana, hemp, THC or CBD.
Re-read independently on 2026-09-20: his Libertarian Party national candidate page and a party feature interview in which he discusses the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, searches and seizures and jury nullification at length. None of these contains the word cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC or CBD.
Their Ballotpedia profile was read in full on 2026-09-20 at ballotpedia.org/Mark_Ash (29571 characters). It contains no occurrence of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use. When we re-read their Ballotpedia profile on 2026-10-15, it recorded that they had not completed Ballotpedia’s 2026 Candidate Connection survey.
⚠️This card does not tell you whether this candidate held a seat in an earlier Legislature, but the question is now narrower. Read on 2026-10-15, from each chamber’s own journal: the roll of members-elect that the Texas House Journal prints, district by district, on the first day of every regular session from the 75th Legislature (1997) through the 89th (2025), and every senator the Texas Senate Journal names with a district on the first day of every regular session from the 76th (1999) through the 89th.
For the 89th those are journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY01FINAL.PDF and journals.senate.texas.gov/SJRNL/89R/HTML/89RSJ01-14-F.HTM and every journal read is listed on this site’s corrections page. No one by this candidate’s name appears in any of them. That is narrower than a negative answer. Those rolls name the members seated as each session opened, and in most years the Senate’s names the senators who were not up for election by surname alone, so a member who sat only in earlier sessions, who arrived at a special election and was never named in full on a later first day, or who served under another name would not be found this way.
If this candidate is one of those, there may be a cannabis voting record this site is missing.
⚠️Whether this candidate has a campaign site of their own is an open question here, and not a negative answer. This guide has not found one. It no longer claims to have looked in a way that could settle it, because the method this card used to cite was put to a case it was known to have passed and came back just as empty there. So if this candidate publishes a platform of their own, this guide may simply not have reached it, and the absence of a cannabis position below is weaker evidence than it looks.
This card has been corrected. What earlier versions of it said, and what was wrong with them, is published in the corrections log.
No score: this candidate has no recorded vote or bill authorship on a cannabis measure. Silence is not a position, so nothing is inferred from it.
Campaign sites and voter guides checked for Mark Ash
Pages read in full:
- onyourballot.vote411.org/m/race-detail.do?id=6438465 — sections on the page: Qualifications; Ethics; Equity; Precedent; F Philosophy — the question set the local League of Women Voters chapter wrote for this race, read in full by us on 2026-10-06. Not one of its questions asks about cannabis, hemp or drug policy. The candidate answered, in free text of their own, and no answer of theirs contains, on a word boundary, cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, hemp-derived, THC, thc-a, CBD, delta-8, delta-9, cannabinoid, dispensary, decriminalisation, psilocybin, Compassionate Use, consumable hemp, SB 3, Senate Bill 3, HB 1325 or HB 46.
- votetheperson.org/candidates/mark-ash — sections on the page: Candidate; Your match; Record; Sources — the whole of the independent candidate tracker Vote the Person's page for this candidate, read in full by us on 2026-10-06. The page states the office or district we have on file, so the identification is confirmed, and it cites 6 source(s) of its own. It publishes no marijuana or cannabis position for this candidate, and no cannabis or hemp word appears anywhere on the page. ⚠️That is a second organisation reporting an empty search, not a statement by the candidate.
- lp.org/candidate/mark-ash — sections on the page: a party biography
- lp.org/libertarian-mark-ash-will-challenge-michelle-slaughter-texas-court-criminal-appeals — sections on the page: a party announcement quoting him on civil liberties, jury nullification and body cameras
All 3 candidates on this ballot are listed.