Texas’ big health priorities — dementia research, food labeling and ivermectin — have hit roadblocks
By Terri Langford, The Texas Tribune
June 23, 2026
Last year, Texas became the first state to require warning labels on thousands of food and beverages containing common 44 dyes or additives, cleared the way for ivermectin to be sold without a prescription and approved a $3 billion fund for dementia research. All three were headline-making in their own right.
But nine months later, all three bills — considered health priorities by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows — have run aground, either stuck in the courts or left to linger in the state agency rulemaking process.
Of the three, the Dementia Prevention Research Institute (DPRIT) has been the only one sidetracked from the get-go, blocked for now by a lawsuit filed by two voters who claim there were voting irregularities last fall when Texans overwhelmingly approved it. Proponents are confident that it will eventually prevail. The $3 billion has already been set aside, according to the state comptroller’s office and will remain unspent until the legal case is decided.
“The Alzheimer’s Association is optimistic that the 15th Court of Appeals will uphold the Dementia Prevention Research Institute of Texas, honoring the clear mandate from Texans to confront this disease with urgency and ambition,” said Melissa Sanchez, Texas senior director of public policy for the Alzheimer’s Association. “We will remain steadfast in our commitment to seeing DPRIT fully implemented so that Texas families can benefit from urgently needed prevention, treatment, and care advances.”
But the other two — House Bill 25 that allowed ivermectin to be sold without a prescription and Senate Bill 25, which would have required foods containing 44 ingredients banned in Europe to have warning labels — ran into challenges even though both were supported by medical freedom and Make America Healthy Again proponents.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lauded Texas’ embrace of his agenda during a visit in August, calling out HB 25 and SB 25, among other approved legislation.
But even RFK’s own track history, long on promises to radically reorder Americans’ daily diet and remove ultraprocessed foods, has fallen short. Though, one big nutrition success both he and Texas can point to is the removal of soda as an approved purchase under the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also referred to as food stamps.
Political experts say it’s tough to determine yet if MAHA’s influence is on the wane or rise following last year’s legislative sessions.
Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said MAHA works better as a tool to critique rather than to pass policies.
“The MAHA movement is extremely effective at identifying villains like the federal government, especially the FDA, big pharma, food companies, but it’s less developed as a governing philosophy,” Rottinghaus said. “That’s sort of what is holding them back to some degree. The movement works better as a critique than as a governing framework, until they can get organized and have that centralized focus. It’s gonna be hard to get some of these bills passed.”
Ivermectin, which is primarily used in this country as an antiparasitic for animals, became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic to treat human symptoms for the illness by those who questioned the rapid development of the virus’ vaccine. Gov. Greg Abbott put ivermectin access on his expanded priority list for the Legislature after Texans for Vaccine Choice sent 7,000 signatures in support of the drug.
Today, only 24 pharmacies out of 8,159 licensed in Texas are listed by Texans for Vaccine Choice offering ivermectin without a prescription. That’s fine with state Rep. Joanne Shofner, the Nacogdoches Republican who authored the bill, who saw her legislation not as a mandate for private industry, but as a choice they could make to reach more customers.
“We’re conservative, limited government in Texas. So we’re not going to tell them what to do,” she said.
Ivermectin is also available through online pharmacies that offer a doctor’s consultation.
The Texas State Board of Pharmacy and the Texas Pharmacy Association did not answer The Texas Tribune’s question on why there have been no rules issued to pharmacies about how to abide by the bill. Shofner said her conversations with the pharmacy board in January uncovered no reservations from pharmacies about dispensing ivermectin without a prescription. She was assured by the pharmacy board that pharmacies that wish to proceed and dispense it can do so, she said.
But some pharmacies have said they are concerned that ivermectin could land them in legal trouble because the federal Food and Drug Administration still has not approved ivermectin as an approved treatment for COVID and considers it a drug that requires a prescription.
RoxAnn Dominguez, the Texas Pharmacy Association’s chief executive, said in a statement that pharmacies’ decisions on what to offer is based on the needs of their communities. “We have heard of some pharmacies that identified a need to carry ivermectin, and have it available in their pharmacies without a prescription,” Dominguez said. “We have heard of other pharmacies that made the decision not to dispense ivermectin without a prescription due to liability and regulatory matters.”
Last year, the Texas Medical Association raised questions about whether Texas pharmacists could just hand over ivermectin without a prescription, saying to do so would violate the FDA’s prescription requirement on ivermectin and the state’s Pharmacy Act. The law prohibits a pharmacist from dispensing a prescription drug without a valid physician-patient or practitioner-patient relationship, according to the Texas Medical Association.
“Prescription drugs are potentially harmful if not used under the guidance of a physician or other licensed health care practitioner authorized to prescribe medications,” Dr. Zeke Silva, chair of TMA’s Council on Legislation, said in a written testimony to the House Committee on Public Health last year. “If [ivermectin] is dispensed for an off-label use, it is unclear how the safe and effective dosage will be determined for the condition the patient seeks to treat.”
Soren Jordan, an associate political science professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government & Public Service said even if pharmacists are protected by state law to dispense the drug, they can be held liable for wrongdoing in other ways.
”Being able to sell ivermectin is quite different from wanting to sell it or believing it should be sold,” he said. “Shielding from liability from state law is also different from universal release from civil liability or federal liability. Given the uncertainty around the fitness of ivermectin for health policy, I doubt pharmacists in any state want to be the first to distribute the drug.”
A significant piece of SB 25, the “Make Texas Healthy Again” Act that was designed to force warning labels on foods sold in Texas that contain certain additives, has been blocked from implementation in part by a federal lawsuit by the American Beverage Association.
For foods that contain certain dyes like Blue 1 and 2 or Red 40 or any of the other 41 additives the law calls out, companies would have been required to develop or copyright labels on Jan. 1, 2027 or after with this warning affixed: “WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom.”
But critics of the bill have said some of the additives are deemed safe for use in the U.S., although the FDA is working with industry to phase them out. Others have said that a restriction on an item in another country doesn’t necessarily mean that country thinks they are unsafe. The American Beverage Association made this point in their lawsuit’s argument, stating warnings weren’t made by any U.S.-based health authority, but by “purported policy judgments” from foreign countries.
A federal judge has granted a temporary halt to the enforcement of the warning requirement and the lawsuit is ongoing. The association declined to comment further, citing pending litigation.
The bill’s author, state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, did not immediately return a request for comment.
State Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, who signed on as a House sponsor of the legislation, said he mainly supported it because he supports food transparency for consumers and the fact it included more nutrition education for Texas school children and for medical school students and included provisions not to use eliminating physical education from a student’s day as a punishment. Those provisions have gone into effect.
Bucy is not concerned. “I think that part of the bill is important. I think transparency with labelings people understand what they’re putting in their bodies is always helpful.”
Even if a new law gets held up, it doesn’t necessarily mean it has failed, he said. “We run aground a lot in Texas governing,” Bucy said. “Where we pass laws, they contradict federal, and then it has to play in the courts.”
Bucy and Jordan, the Texas A&M professor, suggest the failures of these bills are unintended byproducts of the Republican agenda.
Jordan thinks the problem with a measure like the food labeling bill is that it is pro-regulation, something traditional conservatives are normally fighting against.
“Texas voters consistently joke about California Proposition 65 warnings being placed on everything,” he said. “But SB 25 would introduce Texas-specific warning labels that advise ingredients are unfit for consumption, using examples of Australia, Canada, the EU, and the UK: places Texas conservative candidates routinely disavow as socialist.”
That doesn’t mean the regulations are a bad idea,” Jordan said. “It’s just not a style of politics Texas voters are used to.”
Similarly, conservatives’ history for calling out voter fraud is also threatening to derail one of their priorities in the dementia funding bill, Bucy said. He said it is unfortunate that such a measure, supported as it is by both parties and voters, is being upheld by two voters who believe, despite proof to the contrary by the secretary of state’s office, that there were voting machine irregularities. Patrick has called the voters’ lawsuit “frivolous.”
”[Republicans] have fanned the flames of conspiracy theories around elections,” he said. “And now that’s being used to hold up some legislation that not only was passed by the vast majority of the legislature, it was also voted on by the people of the state.”
Rottinghaus believes the lack of full implementation of any of these bills mean that MAHA is dead. It could be a matter of a movement in its early days. After all, it took a decade for vaccine critics to gain support for their legislative priorities.
“It’s an ongoing process. I think we’re going to see them come back but come back stronger with better arguments, a kind of cleaner set of regulatory ideas and a more clear strategy for how to get these bills passed,” Rottinghaus said.
Disclosure: Texas A&M University, Texas Medical Association, Texas Pharmacy Association and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.