Texas runs the harshest marijuana laws of any state with a functioning cannabis economy next door. Two ounces gets you 180 days and a $2,000 fine. Four ounces is a felony. Meanwhile Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arkansas all have some form of legal access, and Texans drive to get it anyway. We're not stopping anything. We're just making sure Texas collects none of the money.
The money is real, and it's going to other states
Since Colorado and Washington opened the first legal markets in 2014, states have collected more than $28 billion in cannabis tax revenue — $4.57 billion in 2025 alone, the biggest year yet. California cleared $1 billion on its own. Michigan pulled in over $500 million. Texas has the population, the agricultural land, and the consumer base to out-earn every one of those states — and right now we're sending that tax base to New Mexico and Oklahoma instead.
Put it toward property taxes — and mean it
Other states have let cannabis revenue get swallowed into general funds, education budgets, or programs nobody tracks closely. A recent New Jersey study found local cannabis taxes haven't meaningfully lowered anyone's property tax bill there, because the money just gets absorbed into normal city budgets. We're not asking Texas to make that mistake. We're asking for a hard, statutory earmark — cannabis tax revenue tied directly to property tax relief, written into the bill, not left to a future legislature's discretion. Texans pay some of the highest property taxes in the country with no state income tax to balance it. This is one lever the legislature hasn't pulled yet.
The reefer madness math never worked
For decades the argument against legalization was that it would wreck public health and safety. Fifteen states now have years of real data instead of guesses, and the doom scenarios didn't happen. What did happen: a market that pays taxes, tests its product, and doesn't sell to cartels. The people who were right about this in the 1970s are still right. The people who weren't have had fifty years to be proven wrong, and they have been.
It's already medicine here — just barely
Texas already admits marijuana is medicine. HB 46, signed by Governor Abbott in June 2025, expanded the Compassionate Use Program to cover chronic pain, Crohn's disease, traumatic brain injury, and terminal illness — on top of the epilepsy, PTSD, and cancer patients already qualified. That made Texas the 40th state with a real medical cannabis program. The FDA has separately approved cannabis-derived drugs for some of the toughest cases in medicine: Epidiolex for children with Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome epilepsy, dronabinol and nabilone for the nausea that comes with chemotherapy and AIDS-related wasting. The state already conceded the medicine works. What's missing is the honesty to stop treating a plant as a felony everywhere else in a person's life.
Hemp is the part nobody talks about, and it should be the easiest yes
Marijuana and industrial hemp come from the same plant family, and hemp alone is worth building a Texas industry around. Hemp fiber goes into hempcrete — a fire-resistant, mold-resistant building material that absorbs carbon instead of emitting it during production, unlike regular concrete. It goes into biodegradable plastics already used in automotive interiors and packaging. It goes into paper, rope, textiles, and animal feed. Texas farmers are sitting on some of the best hemp-growing acreage in the country and a legalization framework that would let that industry scale past the patchwork rules it's stuck with now.
What we're asking the Legislature to do
Pass full adult-use legalization ahead of the 2027 session. Regulate it, tax it, and write the property tax earmark into the bill itself — not a promise, a statute. Texas is the only state left pretending this fight is still 1985. It's 2026. Fifteen years of other states' data is sitting right there.
Don't just sign — tell your rep
Signing this gets you counted. Contacting your actual state representative and senator directly is what moves a bill, and it takes under five minutes:
- Find out who represents you: Who Represents Me? — Texas Legislature Online — enter your address to get your State House member, State Senator, and their office contact info.
- Texas House of Representatives directory: house.texas.gov/members
- Texas Senate directory: senate.texas.gov/members.php
- Governor Greg Abbott: Contact the Governor's Office
A short, polite message — you're a constituent, and you want full adult-use legalization with a statutory property tax earmark — carries real weight, especially before the 2027 session convenes.
If you're a Texan who's tired of driving to Oklahoma, tired of watching your property tax bill climb every year, or tired of a medical program that still leaves patients waiting — sign this, contact your rep, and share it with someone who hasn't thought about it yet.