Tag: SB3

Ricky Williams Joins SB3 Fight

Written by Rachel Nelson on March 20, 2025. Posted in Business, Football. No Comments on Ricky Williams Joins SB3 Fight

Will $475,000 Campaign Help Bring a 4th Quarter Win?

Former Longhorn and Heisman winner Ricky Williams hopes to sway Texas lawmakers on cannabis legislation. He co-founded Project Champion with former NFL athletes Jim McMahon and Kyle Turley. Together, the trio hopes to use their influence — and a $475,000 campaign — to stop Senate Bill 3 in its tracks.

SB3 passed with bipartisan support through the Texas Senate on March 19. If the House passes the bill, it will ban THC in the state and kill an $8 billion industry.

“As former professional athletes, we’ve experienced firsthand the physical and mental toll of high-impact sports,” Project Champion’s website states. “Many of us have turned to cannabis as a natural solution for pain management and overall well-being.

“Recognizing the need for safe, effective and accessible cannabis products, we’ve joined forces to advocate for fair legislation and shatter the stigma surrounding this powerful plant.”

Williams is no stranger to cannabis activism, as he was suspended from the NFL multiple times during his career for positive drug tests. In recent months, the league has loosened regulations surrounding cannabis. In 2023, Chiefs’ Travis Kelce told Vanity Fair that he estimates 80% of players use the substance.

On episode 134 of The Texas Hemp Show Podcast, Williams shared that he wished more pro-cannabis athletes would speak out – a mission Project Champion facilitates.

“The stigma is still strong,” he said. “I think people are afraid of it tarnishing their reputation. But to me, a reputation of being something that you’re not and pretending to that you are – not really worth it.”

With their NFL days behind them, Williams, McMahon and Turley have turned over new leaves as cannabis entrepreneurs. In recent years, Williams launched his Highsman brand, while McMahon and Turley have a joint venture called Revenant.

“To me, being an athlete is temporal, and people forget about you – unless you’re the best ever – people forget about you in a generation,” Williams told The Texas Hemp Show in 2023. “What I tell young athletes, I say, ‘Being a professional athlete in the long scheme of your life, it just gives you a platform to do something. But how are you going to use that platform?’ I feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to utilize my platform to touch and help and inspire a lot of people who don’t have any interest in football.”

The athletes work alongside the organization’s president, Gretchen Gailey, a seasoned Washington D.C. journalist who worked in the public affairs space and served as communications director for Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA).

As part of their nationwide efforts, Project Champion lands earned media telling powerful cannabis stories. They have secured headlines on Forbes, MJBizDaily, Benzinga and Chron (to name a few).

Texas’ 89th Legislative Session ends June 2, and it is not yet clear when the House will vote on SB3. In the meantime, Project Champion plans to launch a digital advocacy campaign, host high-impact events and build coalitions.

For more information, visit projectchampion.org.

Texas Advocacy for Hemp: Life Rafts vs. Torpedoes

Written by Jay Maguire on February 22, 2025. Posted in Legislative.

The Texas Legislature is not kind to perceived bad industries that show division. Lawmakers, especially those in the governing party, are well-practiced in divide-and-rule. When they see infighting, they exploit it. When they see an industry that can’t even align on its own interests, they stop taking it seriously. That is why survival in this fight depends entirely on solidarity.

And yet, Bayou City Hemp just made the worst possible mistake. By circulating a flyer in the Capitol calling for a ban on all smokable hemp—without even informing their own trade association leaders—they didn’t just undermine the industry’s collective voice. They handed prohibitionists exactly what they wanted: proof that even we aren’t convinced of our own legitimacy.

It’s as if, seeing the torpedo in the water, Bayou City launched their own life raft, hoping to save themselves before the ship went down. But that’s not how this works. The prohibitionists don’t see them as allies—they see them as easy targets. The second the industry collapses, Bayou City’s raft won’t be spared. It will be machine-gunned like the rest. And in the process, they’ve weakened the entire industry’s argument for reasonable regulation. Instead of presenting a united front to lawmakers, they’ve reinforced the very narrative prohibitionists are pushing—that this is an industry that cannot regulate itself and therefore must be banned altogether.

If they truly believed in this course of action, they should have done it the right way—resigning from the board, stating their case within industry discussion groups and working with the professional advocates and advocacy groups—who are expert at understanding the political landscape, the unwritten rules, and finding ways to win when weaker sisters panic—to find a compromises and creative solutions. For example, the main knock on our industry right now is the largely unproven allegation that we sell and market to kids. While we can all agree that mimicking brands of children cereals and candies is a bad look, there’s no Joe Camel-level duplicity happening here but the narrative is established and refuting it costs more energy than we any benefit we’d derive from engaging in the “I know you are, but what am I?” tropes that so often ensue in similar circumstances.

The answer: we’ve been working diligently to identify and refine technologies that make it much less chancy when it comes to age gating—as an upcoming article in Special Legislative issue of the Texas Hemp Reporter will demonstrate, harnessing the power of AI and facial recognition tightens up on the one area of weakness we all admit we have—consistent carding of customers and retail clerks who are 100% compliant and on the ball every single transaction.

As you’ll see from the machines, we can show law makers we’ve got it figured out and seek collaboration on areas of alignment, not mindless deflection to other players in industry when we feel out own interests threatened. This is just one example of what Bayou City might have done. Instead, they’ve set the stage for a circular firing squad within the industry, betraying the broader interests they had at least an arguable duty to represent and doing the prohibitionists’ work of undermining credibility for them.

Now is the time for discipline, not desperation. If we want lawmakers to treat this as a mature, responsible industry worthy of negotiation, we need to act like one. Anything less, and we are simply making the case for our own demise.

MAHA a “yes”- but no to Reefer Madness

Written by Mark Bordas on February 17, 2025. Posted in Legislative.

In recent years (and certainly during the last political cycle) the United States has
experienced a growing shift, and overall desire for natural products, with an increasing
number of people seeking alternatives to processed foods, beverages, and man-made
medicines.

This movement towards holistic choices preceded the more recent MAHA (Make America
Healthy Again) campaign, made popular by Robert F. Kennedy, who has been undergoing
hearings to become the nation’s top health official as Secretary of The United States Health
and Human Services agency.
In an era where processed foods, drinks, and synthetic medicines have dominated, there is
a rising popularity of plant-based solutions, as well as a nationwide effort to restore vitality
by regaining a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. In its most elemental form MAHA seeks
to empower individuals to take control of their lives by embracing organic, plant-based, and
holistic approaches.

Hemp, a versatile plant with nutritional, health, and industrial benefits, is emblematic of
that significant shift towards more natural lifestyles, offering the least amount of THC from
the cannabis plant, along with high concentrations of CBD, omega fatty acids, fiber and
protein.

Recent misrepresentations of hemp (again by definition delivering the least amount of
psychoactive compound THC than any other offering) are reminiscent of an equally out of
touch 1930’s exploitation film “Reefer Madness”. The movie’s premise revolves around
melodramatic events after high school students are introduced to marijuana. Decades
later, the film is now only referenced and enjoyed as a campy parody for laughs.
Although SB 3 has yet to be released (as of this writing) it is no laughing matter, and it too
would seem to suffer from the same, out of step relationship with today’s reality. If the state
of Texas suffers from a “THC problem” it is only logical to deduce that the problem is
derived from sources containing large amounts of THC- not the product with the lowest
amount. Anything being offered as hemp but surpassing the .03 percent THC by dry weight,
by definition, is marijuana and not hemp. So, if Texas has a THC problem it is due in part to
unscrupulous sellers seeking to circumvent existing laws- not the 8,000 licensed hemp
concerns seeking to adhere to it.

Admittedly, the state of Texas has an enforcement problem with perhaps up to eight agents
seeking to enforce existing laws surrounding licensing, quality control, and compliance

checks. Additionally, hemp should be available only as intended: for responsible, adult
use. We need to refine regulations and pass similar product restrictions, akin to those
applied to alcohol, tobacco, and nicotine.

Any thought of prohibiting the product outright should be met with caution. In age of e-
commerce and a historically mobile populace, the thought of eliminating the product

altogether seems fanciful. Afterall, a similar attempt to make alcohol illegal in the United
States is now often referred to as the “Failed Noble Experiment”. From 1920-1933 the
United States saw crime, sickness and deaths climb as black-market alcohol hit the
streets to satisfy the public’s thirst. Today the transport of any product is easier than ever,
as out-of-state and overseas internet concerns would prosper under any prohibition, while
Texas businesses would be shuttered and over 50,000 industry jobs lost. Bootlegged and
black-market products raise the specter of a true public health concern: fentanyl
poisoning.

I remain optimistic that our legislative leaders will ultimately embrace MAHA by allowing
Texans to make individual choices in pursuing healthier lifestyles and rejecting the dated,
misplaced mindset of Reefer Madness.

Keep in mind how proud (and rightfully so) our legislative leaders are of the “Texas Miracle”:
the Lone Star State has been recognized as the Best State for Business for 20 years! It has
won the prestigious Governor’s Cup 12 years in a row for being the most job-creating
corporate location or place to expand existing businesses. Based on federal and state
legalization of hemp, it has grown year-over- year and was valued at being an $8 billion
industry in 2022. Hemp industry owners are part of the 3.2 million small businesses that
employ nearly half of all working Texans. As our legislative leaders like to say they, small
business is the backbone of our state’s economy.

In closing- further, thoughtful regulations to protect the consuming public, by restricting
access to adults, and ensuring those who wish to purchase the product are doing so
through duly licensed, regulated, law-abiding businesses, will serve Texas best. I look
forward to the state winning its 13th Governor’s Cup in a row, and the hemp industry being a
part of that calculation.

Mark Bordas
Executive Director
Texas Hemp Business Council
02/13/25