Governor Abbott, before you sign THC bill, you should know it makes huge mistake | Opinion

Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to decide soon whether to sign Senate Bill 3, a sweeping ban on hemp and CBD products that recently passed through the Texas legislature.

Most of the public conversation has focused on the bill’s impact on small businesses — and rightfully so. Texas has one of the largest hemp economies in the country, employing tens of thousands of people in retail, manufacturing, farming, transportation and testing labs. Hundreds of hemp retailers could be forced to shut down overnight. Thousands of workers could lose their jobs.

But what’s missing from the conversation is another threat: SB 3 could make it more legally dangerous to possess federally legal hemp than to possess illegal marijuana.

That’s not a rhetorical flourish. It’s a very real consequence of how this bill is written, and it could create chaos in courtrooms across Texas.

Here’s how: under Senate Bill 3, it would be a third-degree felony to manufacture, deliver, or possess with intent to deliver a “consumable” hemp product that contains any cannabinoid other than CBD or CBG. That means these products could now land someone in prison for up to 10 years. Under the state’s existing delivery of marihuana law, possessing five pounds or less of cannabis isn’t even a third-degree felony.

SB 3 also declares that “conduct constituting an offense under this section also constitutes an offense under another law, [and] the actor may be prosecuted under this section, the other law, or both.” This means an individual could potentially face stacked charges for the same incident by being charged once under the new hemp laws and again under the existing marijuana laws, ballooning criminal penalties and potential prison time for a nonviolent offense.

Even more confusing: The bill introduces distinctions between “consumable” and “smokable” hemp that don’t exist in marijuana law. Under the proposed law, possessing a “consumable hemp product” would be a class C misdemeanor, a lower penalty than simple possession of marihuana under existing law. However, the proposed penalty for “consumable hemp products for smoking” would be on par with simple possession of marijuana under existing law.

These inconsistencies could give defendants an incentive to argue that they were caught with marijuana (which is illegal under federal law) rather than hemp (which is federally legal) because the penalties might be less severe.

Think about that for a second: Texas lawmakers are creating a framework in which someone might have to argue in court that they were in possession of an illegal substance to avoid worse penalties for a legal one.

These legal contradictions will not just confuse defendants. They will also throw prosecutors, judges, and juries into a tangle of conflicting laws and unclear standards. How will law enforcement test and differentiate products in real time — an especially troubling issue because no current drug test can distinguish between hemp and cannabis? What happens when cases are thrown out because the statute is so convoluted that it can’t be applied consistently?

Moreover, many municipalities in Texas have decriminalized cannabis but not hemp. The Texas Attorney General’s Office continues to challenge these ordinances, but if cities have not weighed in on hemp, does that mean they’ll have to pass new ordinances? And would the attorney general challenge those laws?

While all of these contradictions could throw the courts into chaos, we should also think about the consumers, many of whom are veterans, cancer patients and people living with chronic pain, who have come to rely on these hemp-derived products for relief. These are real people who could be criminalized for buying something today that was perfectly legal yesterday.

At the Last Prisoner Project, we work every day to right the wrongs of cannabis criminalization. We’ve seen firsthand the damage caused when lawmakers rush to outlaw cannabis-adjacent substances without considering the real-world consequences. People lose jobs, housing, custody of their children. They go to jail.

SB 3 threatens to expand those harms. It represents not only a rollback of personal freedoms and business rights, but also a dangerous expansion of criminal liability for people engaging with products that have been openly sold across Texas with little issue.

If the goal is truly to promote public health or consumer safety, there are better, smarter ways to do it. Creating a legal structure for selling or possessing a legal hemp product can send someone to prison for up to a decade is not regulation. That’s escalation.

Abbott still has the opportunity to stop this before it becomes law. He has until June 22 to veto SB 3.

Texans deserve a rational, consistent legal framework — one that doesn’t punish people more harshly for following federal law than for breaking it.

SB 3 is not that framework. It should be vetoed.

This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 5:21 AM.