It's a statewide change, UTDToker. But I'm not sure this is all that significant, really. Or, if it is, it's a very small step.

The new legislation allows police officers more discretion in how they respond to small amounts of cannabis, but the criminal penalties remain the same, whether someone gets a ticket or gets arrested and taken to jail. Plenty of the big police and sheriff's departments in this DFW area have made an issue of assuring the public that they'll still make cannabis arrests instead of simply writing tickets as they have the discretion to do.

If and when we can get the actual penalities changed, in other words making sure cannabis is decriminalized, that's when we'll have some real progress in Texas.