Texas Senate, District 31
The sitting member's recorded votes on the 2025 hemp-THC ban and the Compassionate Use Program expansion are listed below in date order, with their record-vote numbers, as the official journals print them.
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.
- 2025-08-19 Consumable hemp, second called session SB 6 — voted, counted as -2 at weight 3
- 2025-08-18 Consumable hemp, second called session SB 6 — voted, counted as -2 at weight 3
- 2025-08-15 Consumable hemp, second called session SB 6 — signed on, counted as -2 at weight 3
- 2025-08-01 Consumable hemp, first called session SB 5 — voted, counted as -2 at weight 3
- 2025-07-30 Consumable hemp, first called session SB 5 — signed on, counted as -2 at weight 2
- 2025-07-30 Consumable hemp, first called session SB 5 — voted, counted as -2 at weight 3
- 2025-06-01 Texas Compassionate-Use Program HB 46 — voted, counted as +1 at weight 3
- 2025-05-27 Texas Compassionate-Use Program HB 46 — voted, counted as +1 at weight 3
- 2025-05-25 Consumable hemp and hemp-derived cannabinoids SB 3 — voted, counted as -2 at weight 3
- 2025-03-19 Consumable hemp and hemp-derived cannabinoids SB 3 — signed on, counted as -2 at weight 2
- 2025-03-19 Consumable hemp and hemp-derived cannabinoids SB 3 — voted, counted as -2 at weight 3
Average on the −2 to +2 scale: -1.419. Full method and the bill table.
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Coauthored2025-03-19
Signed on as a coauthor of SB 3, the intoxicating-hemp-THC ban.
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Vote2025-03-19
Recorded Nay on the amendment to CSSB 3 limiting the new criminal offenses to products over 0.3 percent delta-9 THC, which failed 8 Yeas to 23 Nays.
WeedVoter’s note — shown here, but not counted in the score: This site does not score floor amendments, because an amendment can point the opposite way to the bill it changes, and its scoring rules read this record as concerning one.
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Vote2025-03-19
Recorded Yea on final passage of CSSB 3 on third reading, which carried 26 Yeas to 5 Nays.
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Vote2025-04-22
Texas Senate: recorded Yea, and named in the printed Yeas roll, on passage to engrossment on second reading of CSSB 1870, which would bar a city or county from placing on the ballot any measure — including a charter amendment — directing that state drug or consumable hemp laws not be fully enforced, and from adopting a non-enforcement policy, with civil penalties of $25,000 for a first violation. The Journal records the vote as 23 Yeas, 8 Nays.
WeedVoter’s note — shown here, but not counted in the score: This site does not score floor amendments, because an amendment can point the opposite way to the bill it changes, and its scoring rules read this record as concerning one.
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Vote2025-04-23
Texas Senate: recorded Yea, and named in the printed Yeas roll, on third-reading passage of CSSB 1870, which would bar a city or county from placing on the ballot any measure — including a charter amendment — directing that state drug or consumable hemp laws not be fully enforced, and from adopting a non-enforcement policy, with civil penalties of $25,000 for a first violation. The Journal records the vote as 23 Yeas, 8 Nays.
WeedVoter’s note — shown here, but not counted in the score: This site does not score floor amendments, because an amendment can point the opposite way to the bill it changes, and its scoring rules read this record as concerning one.
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Vote2025-05-25
Recorded Yea on the motion to concur in the House amendments to SB 3, which carried 25 Yeas to 6 Nays.
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Vote2025-05-27
The Texas Senate passed CSHB 46, the Compassionate Use Program expansion, on third reading by 31 Yeas to 0 Nays. The journal records the totals only and prints no individual names for this vote, so it is recorded here as a unanimous act of the chamber rather than as a named vote.
⚠️The deduction rests on two facts: the Senate has 31 seats, so a tally of 31 Yeas means every seat was filled and every member voted Yea; and this senator is named in other recorded votes printed in the same day’s journal, which establishes they were serving and present that day.
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Vote2025-06-01
The Texas Senate adopted the conference committee report on HB 46, the Compassionate Use Program expansion, by 31 Yeas to 0 Nays. The journal records the totals only and prints no individual names for this vote, so it is recorded here as a unanimous act of the chamber rather than as a named vote.
⚠️The deduction rests on two facts: the Senate has 31 seats, so a tally of 31 Yeas means every seat was filled and every member voted Yea; and this senator is named in other recorded votes printed in the same day’s journal, which establishes they were serving and present that day.
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Coauthored2025-07-30
Signed on as a coauthor of SB 5 of the first called session.
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Vote2025-07-30
Recorded Yea on passage of SB 5 to engrossment on its second reading in the Texas Senate on 2025-07-30, in the first called session of the 89th Legislature. SB 5 is captioned "Relating to the regulation of certain products derived from hemp, including consumable hemp products and the hemp-derived cannabinoids contained in those products; requiring occupational licenses and registrations; imposing fees; creating criminal offenses; authorizing an administrative penalty."
The Senate Journal prints the whole roll: "SB 5 as amended was passed to engrossment by the following vote: Yeas 21, Nays 8. Yeas: Bettencourt, Birdwell, Blanco, Campbell, Creighton, Flores, Hall, A. Hinojosa, J. Hinojosa, Huffman, Hughes, King, Kolkhorst, Middleton, Nichols, Parker, Paxton, Perry, Schwertner, Sparks, West. Nays: Alvarado, Cook, Eckhardt, Gutierrez, Johnson, Menéndez, Miles, Zaffirini. Absent-excused: Hagenbuch."
The printed surname Sparks is resolved against the Texas Senate roster to this member, who holds Senate District 31.
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Vote2025-08-01
Recorded Yea on final passage of SB 5 of the first called session, which carried 21 Yeas to 8 Nays.
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Authored2025-08-15
Filed as one of the 21 primary authors of SB 6 of the second called session.
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Vote2025-08-18
Texas Senate: recorded Yea, and named in the printed Yeas roll, on passage to engrossment of SB 6 on second reading, the second called session’s bill regulating consumable hemp products and the hemp-derived cannabinoids in them. The Journal records the vote as 22 Yeas, 8 Nays.
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Vote2025-08-18
Texas Senate: recorded Yea, and named in the printed Yeas roll, on the motion to suspend the regular order of business to take up SB 6 of the second called session on its second reading, the bill regulating consumable hemp products and the hemp-derived cannabinoids in them. The motion prevailed 22 Yeas to 8 Nays. This is the procedural vote that brought the bill up; the Journal records the passage to engrossment that followed as "Same as previous roll call", and that vote is listed separately.
WeedVoter’s note — shown here, but not counted in the score: This site does not score procedural motions, such as suspending a rule, postponing, recommitting or reconsidering, because such a motion decides how a bill is handled rather than what it does, and its scoring rules read this record as one.
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Vote2025-08-19
Recorded Yea on final passage of SB 6 of the second called session, which carried 22 Yeas to 8 Nays.
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 John Betancourt, 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 — including every Yea, Nay, present-not-voting, absent and statement-of-vote list, where this name does not appear because they hold no Texas legislative office; the author, joint-author, coauthor and sponsor tables of every cannabis, hemp, THC and Compassionate Use bill filed in the 87th, 88th and 89th Legislatures and the 2025 called sessions, 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/John_Betancourt, 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/John_Betancourt (18174 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 on 2026-10-05: the Texas Hemp Business Council’s published 2026 candidate questionnaire roster at texashempbusinesscouncil.com/wp-json/thbc/v1/candidate-responses and texashempbusinesscouncil.com/candidate-responses. The council is a hemp industry trade association; it put twenty questions about hemp and THC policy to 221 named candidates for the Texas Legislature and statewide office, this candidate among them, and publishes the answers it receives.
On the date checked the council’s own roster recorded this candidate’s status as "awaiting" and carried no answers from them; 30 of the 221 had answered by that date and this candidate was not one of them. The council states that answers are added as they are completed, so this records only what the roster showed on 2026-10-05.
⚠️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 John Betancourt
Pages read in full:
- theballotbrief.com/candidate/john-betancourt-tx — sections on the page: The Ballot Brief's candidate profile, a guide that says its entries are researched and written with AI, read by us on 2026-10-17 (HTTP 200). It names him as the Democratic nominee for Texas Senate District 31 and states that no campaign website was found as of September 11, 2026; that is its finding, not ours. None of cannabis, cannabinoid, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8, delta-9, Compassionate Use or decriminalisation appears on the page.
All 2 candidates on this ballot are listed.