They say knowledge is power, and a cannabis business deep in the heart of South Texas hopes to educate while spreading hemp-filled love across the city of San Antonio at a rally with a purpose. But this isn’t your typical rally.
Alamo Bud Co.’s co-owner and San Antonio native, Wade Warner, is one of the people behind the rally taking place Saturday, August 16. Lovingly dubbed “the people vs. SB 3,” Warner told MySA in a sit-down interview at the company’s new outpost on Bandera Road that the idea to host the rally came up long before Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed Senate Bill 3. This is the Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick-backed bill that would criminalize all THC in Texas outside of the state’s medical marijuana program, successfully upending the state’s hemp industry as Texans have come to know it.
“When I heard about SB 3, and was worried about whether it was gonna pass,” Warner explained, “I wanted to do one last, kind of, what I thought would be one last event to get together, advocate for reform and educate.”
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Alamo Bud Co., which opened their first retail shop in March 2025, hosted a similar event in March, and Warner admitted the large turnout came as a surprise. But its success inspired the August 16 event. While things on the ground have certainly changed — given Abbott’s June 22 veto and decision to place the topic on the agenda for the special session that kicks off Monday, July 21, leading the purpose of the rally to shift ever so slightly — Warner emphasized that it’s still about education.
“The last idea of the event was to educate,” Warner said, noting that since Senate Bill 3 did pass the Texas House and Texas Senate, he wanted to host something to help cannabis business owners and consumers figure out how to lawfully operate under such laws, should additional regulations be approved during the special session. “Nobody wants mom, uncle, grandma [or] little Jeffrey to be a felon.”
While the future of the bill to ban THC in Texas now lies in the hands of the Legislature, it’s better to be prepared and armed with as much information as possible, regardless of what happens next.
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What to expect at San Antonio’s anti-SB 3 rally
When some hear the word “rally,” they often think of a protest with people chanting in unison and a healthy dose of good trouble. But that’s not what Alamo Bud Co.’s “the people vs. SB 3” event is all about. There will be live music by a local Chicano psychedelic band called Vision Echoes, vendors and chats with top cannabis attorneys, veterans, cannabis podcasters and hemp advocates, among other things.
“This current event, the SB 3 event, obviously, was tailored around the bill,” Warner said. “But that’s the whole idea — to educate, inform, bring awareness, advocate, but have some fun at the same time.”
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While the event will have a protest “mentality,” Warner reassured us that education and good fun will take center stage over rally vibes. “Come out and support and see what it’s about. Learn. If you don’t know something, come out and learn. Because we’re going to educate, we’re going to inform, we’re going to have fun.”
The free event will take place August 16 at Texas VFW Post 76 from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. A flyer for the event reads, “SB3 is still the enemy. We are still the resistance. And now we’ve got a new battleground.”
This article first appeared on MySanAntonio.com