PETITION FOR IMMEDIATE LEGISLATIVE REVIEW AND GUARANTEE OF CONSTITUTIONAL DUE PROCESS

TO: The Honorable Members of the State Legislature 

Preamble: The Fundamental Breach of the Social Contract

When the state explicitly authorizes, licenses, and taxes a commercial market, it enters into a binding covenant of trust with its citizens. In 2019, when Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1325 into law, the state signaled to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, and everyday consumers that hemp-derived products were lawful, regulated, and safe for commerce.

Citizens stepped forward in good faith. They invested life savings, built legitimate businesses, created tens of thousands of local jobs, and paid millions into state coffers. To now flip the switch and criminalize those same law-abiding people without safe harbors or grandfather protections is not a routine policy adjustment. This isn't a routine debate over policy preferences; it is a fundamental breach of the social contract.

True conservative governance is rooted in constitutional liberty, limited government, predictable law, and fundamental property rights. When state power shifts from protecting rights to moral proselytizing and arbitrary overreach, the balance between liberty and public safety is broken. Weaponizing the law to threaten a massive populace of honest citizens with arrest for complying with rules the state itself created is the definition of tyranny.

The Scale of Lawful Reliance: State-Sanctioned Economic Impact

The state did not merely tolerate this market—it actively licensed, regulated, and profited from it:

• $5.5 Billion to $8 Billion in annual statewide economic activity generated by hemp-derived products. 
• 8,500+ Registered Small Businesses: Main-street storefronts, farmers, labs, and distributors operating in full light of state law.
• 53,000+ Texan Jobs: Working citizens and family breadwinners employed across retail, manufacturing, and logistics.
• $268+ Million in Sales Tax Extracted: State and local government agencies willingly accepted hundreds of millions in tax revenue generated directly from these legal sales.

The State-Manufactured Catch-22

By collecting tax revenue on the front end and moving to criminalize participants on the back end, the state creates a perverse economic loop: monetizing market permission through taxes and licenses, and subsequently monetizing punishment through criminal fines, court fees, and civil asset forfeiture.

This creates an impossible, zero-sum trap for citizens who obeyed the law:

1. Comply with new bans: Suffer total financial loss, destroyed investments, and ruined livelihoods with zero state compensation.
2. Retain legal property: Instantly face criminal exposure and felony arrest for holding items that were explicitly authorized by the state yesterday.

A government that turns lawful compliance into a future criminal liability destroys the predictability that the Rule of Law guarantees.

Formal Demands for Legislative Action

We, the undersigned citizens, demand that the Legislature immediately convene to balance the hand of government, restrain regulatory overreach, and protect constitutional rights through the following actions:

1. Enact Statutory Grandfather Clauses: Guarantee complete legal immunity from criminal prosecution or property seizure for individuals and businesses possessing products legally acquired under HB 1325.
2. Prohibit Arbitrary Market Traps: Restrict administrative and legislative bodies from reclassifying legal, taxed consumer goods into contraband without mandatory multi-year sell-off windows or statutory buyback compensation.
3. Re-Establish Liberty over State Overreach: Restore Texas policy to the principle of true constitutional freedom—protecting private property, limited government, and predictable due process over authoritarian enforcement.