Texas House, District 49
Central Austin. The certified ballot carries a Democratic and a Green nominee and no Republican. Neither candidate holds state legislative office, so neither appears in any 2025 cannabis or hemp roll call.
How this score is worked out
Seven kinds of act move this number, and they do not count equally. A recorded vote counts 3, and so does authoring a bill or signing an executive action; signing on to somebody else’s bill counts 2. A statement or a questionnaire answer counts 2 as well, and an organisational endorsement counts 1. A vote takes its direction from the bill, whose effect is set out in advance; the rest take it from our reading of what was said, and each one below shows that reading and the reason for it. Acts shown with no number were examined and deliberately left out of the arithmetic, with a reason given.
- 2026-09-21 questionnaire — Answered that she has been publicly supportive of legalising, regulating and taxing cannabis for personal use by adults 21 and over, and that she does not believe it makes sense to outlaw the hemp industry, counted as +2 at weight 2
- 2026-03-22 statement — Platform plank calls for legalising, regulating and taxing cannabis for adults 21 and over, counted as +2 at weight 2
Average on the −2 to +2 scale: 2. Full method and the bill table.
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Said2026-03-22
Published a platform plank under the heading "Criminal Justice Reform" on her campaign site reading, in full: "Legalize, regulate, and tax cannabis for personal use by Texas adults aged 21+". The page carries no date of its own; this is the date of the earliest Internet Archive capture containing the text, so the position was published by at least then.
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Questionnaire2026-09-21
Said she has been "publicly supportive of the legalization, regulation, and taxation of cannabis for personal use by Texas adults aged 21+", in the Texas Hemp Business Council’s 2026 candidate questionnaire. The council is a hemp industry trade association; it put twenty questions to 223 candidates for the Texas Legislature and statewide office and publishes the answers it receives in full, without editing. These are the candidate’s own words, submitted by the candidate.
Asked about the future of hemp in Texas, the answer was, in full: "I have been publicly supportive of the legalization, regulation, and taxation of cannabis for personal use by Texas adults aged 21+. Similarly, I do not believe it makes sense to outlaw a hemp industry that has billions of dollars in economic impact in a manner that harms Texas businesses and consumers. Product sales should be limited to adults 21+. I also support testing, safe packaging, clear labelling, and other commonsense regulations based in evidence and science."
Asked who should be permitted to sell THC, to whom, at what dose, in what form and subject to what safeguards: "Product sales should be limited to adults 21+ from licensed and regulated retailers. I also support testing, safe packaging, clear labelling, and other commonsense regulations but am less concerned with form or dosage outside of what may be evidence-based standards." On the questionnaire’s fixed-choice questions: on maintaining a legal, regulated hemp marketplace, "Strongly Support"; on whether regulation is preferable to prohibition where a product can be made and sold safely, "Yes"; on hemp agriculture, "Support"; on retail regulation, "Local licensing in addition to state requirements"; on tax policy, "Yes"; on consumer choice, "Yes".
The date is the date the council recorded the submission, in Central time.
texashempbusinesscouncil.com, texashempbusinesscouncil.com, texashempbusinesscouncil.com, texashempbusinesscouncil.com
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 Arshia Papari, and the limits on it
Checked on 2026-09-18: the member-level rolls of every 2025 cannabis and hemp record vote in the official Texas House and Senate Journals — SB 3 and HB 46 in the regular session, SB 5 in the first called session and SB 6 in the second — where they do not appear, because they hold no Texas legislative office; the author, coauthor and sponsor lists for SB 3 and HB 46 at the Legislature's own bill-lookup service; and a press sweep including the Spectrum News report on the March 2026 Austin candidate forum on THC policy, which quotes six candidates by name and does not include them.
Also checked, and read in full on 2026-09-18: this candidate's Ballotpedia profile at ballotpedia.org/Arshia_Papari, including any Candidate Connection survey answers published there, which contains no mention of cannabis, marijuana, hemp, THC or CBD.
Their Ballotpedia profile was read in full on 2026-09-20 at ballotpedia.org/Arshia_Papari (20828 characters). It contains no occurrence of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use. They completed a Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey — free-text answers they wrote themselves — and it raises no cannabis subject.
⚠️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.
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 Arshia Papari
Pages read in full:
- onyourballot.vote411.org/m/race-detail.do?id=71565572 — sections on the page: Qualifications; Education; Resources; Healthcare; Data Centers — 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.
- arshiafortexas.org/platform their own site — sections on the page: Affordability; Freeze The Rent; Cheaper Groceries; Universal Childcare; End Corporate Power; Make Communities Safer; End Mass Incarceration; Community Mental Health Support; Criminal Justice Reform; Free Speech; Protest & Students' Rights
- www.gp.org/arshia_papari_for_texas — sections on the page: a party profile published 2025-12-18
- communityimpact.com/central-austin/election/qa-meet-the-candidates-running-for-texas-house-district-49-in-novembers-election — sections on the page: Community Impact's candidate Q&A for this November race, published 2026-08-24, read in full by us on 2026-10-15 (HTTP 200). The paper put its own questions to each candidate and printed the answers it received. The candidate answered, in free text of their own, and no answer printed under their name 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 or HB 46.
- austinvotersguide.org/LWVAA-VG-EN.pdf — sections on the page: The League of Women Voters of the Austin Area’s printed Voters Guide for the 2026-11-03 election (a PDF the publisher’s server dates 2026-10-15), which prints the candidate’s own answers to the League’s questions for this race, read in full by us on 2026-10-17 (HTTP 200). None of the League’s questions asks about cannabis, hemp or THC, and no answer of theirs contains cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8, cannabinoid, dispensary, decriminalisation or Compassionate Use.
All 2 candidates on this ballot are listed.