He Tried to Kill 50,000 Texas Jobs

There is a version of conservatism that says government should get out of the way of small business. Dan Patrick spent the 2025 legislative session proving he doesn't believe a word of it.

Senate Bill 3 was the Lieutenant Governor's baby. Its official caption tells you exactly what it was: a bill "relating to the regulation of products derived from hemp, including consumable hemp products and the hemp-derived cannabinoids contained in those products." In plain English, it was a ban — a sweeping prohibition aimed at the legal hemp and THC products that thousands of licensed Texas businesses had built their livelihoods around after the state legalized hemp in 2019.

A multi-billion-dollar industry, built on a promise

When Texas opened the door to consumable hemp, entrepreneurs walked through it. Veterans opened shops. Farmers planted fields. Retailers hired staff, signed leases, paid sales tax, and followed the rules the state wrote for them. The industry that grew up around that 2019 law supports tens of thousands of Texas jobs — a figure hemp advocates put at roughly 50,000 during the fight over SB 3 — and generates billions in economic activity.

Dan Patrick decided all of it had to go.

When your own party's governor says you went too far

Here is the part that should stop every Texas conservative cold. SB 3 passed. It cleared the Senate on May 26, 2025, and the House on May 27. It landed on the governor's desk.

And then Greg Abbott vetoed it on June 22, 2025.

Sit with that. A Republican governor — not exactly a soft touch on drug policy — looked at the Lieutenant Governor's signature prohibition and said no. When the most powerful Republican in the state has to step in and stop your "war" on small businesses, you are not governing. You are crusading.

The tell

Patrick didn't pick this fight because Texans were demanding it. He picked it because he wanted it. He was willing to wipe out a legal industry, put Texans out of work, and shutter family businesses that did everything the state asked of them — all to win a culture-war trophy.

That's not limited government. That's a man who thinks the rules are his to rewrite whenever they get in the way of his next headline.

Texas has a choice in 2026. We don't have to keep handing the gavel to someone who treats Texas small businesses as collateral damage.