If Nebraska voters approve a pair of medical marijuana ballot initiatives next month, Kansas will be surrounded by states with some form of legal cannabis.

The Sunflower State is one of 10 in the U.S. where marijuana remains illegal and criminalized, including for people who rely on it to treat chronic pain and other medical conditions.

More than 1,000 Kansans currently hold medical marijuana cards in neighboring Missouri, according to the state’s Department of Health and Senior Services. And nothing is stopping other residents from crossing the state lines to purchase recreational marijuana legally.

But year after year, medical marijuana reform has stalled out in the Kansas Senate. In 2021, Senate leadership blocked a medical marijuana bill from being debated on the floor after a bipartisan coalition in the House passed it 79-42.

Earlier this year, a pilot program that would have placed the growth, processing and distribution of medical marijuana under the control of four companies was tabled. Pro-cannabis lawmakers’ last-ditch maneuver to sidestep Senate President Ty Masterson and bring a reform bill to the floor failed 12-25.

“You can only hold back progress so long,” said Erren Wright, president of the Kansas Cannabis Business Association.

Medical marijuana committee

As lawmakers running for reelection set their priorities for 2025, medical marijuana is getting another round of hearings in Topeka. The 2024 Special Committee on Medical Marijuana is charged with studying how Kansas could be impacted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s tentative plan to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

Committee member Nick Hoheisel, a Wichita Republican, said he’s in favor of a “Kansas-centric” medical marijuana program.

“If it’s grown here, it’s regulated here, it stays in Kansas through the entire process — that gives me a little more peace of mind when individuals are looking for these products to help them,” Hoheisel told The Star.

One of his concerns with the largely unregulated hemp-derivative THC product market in Kansas is that there’s no way of knowing where oils and gummies came from and if they are more or less potent than their packaging indicates. But an outright prohibition on cannabis isn’t realistic or humane, Hoheisel said.

“As a small government kind of Republican, I don’t believe the government should be telling somebody that’s suffering from cancer what they can and can’t ingest into their body in order to find some pain relief — especially folks that are in stage four cancer and have six months to live,” Hoheisel said.

Shawnee Republican Mike Thompson has been a vocal opponent of marijuana reform, thwarting it in recent sessions from his position as chair of the Senate Committee on Federal and State Affairs. He said any potential upsides of legalization for medical use would be outweighed by its potential for abuse.

“It seems to me that I’ve known some young people who’ve been addicted to marijuana, and it’s virtually almost ruined their lives,” Thompson said during a special committee meeting this month. “And with it being illegal, to me, I see it as a benefit because it prevents them from engaging in that.”

Some marijuana users can become addicted, research shows, but addiction rates are lower than for many other substances including alcohol, tobacco and opioids.

“How do you possibly limit the scope of what a physician will prescribe this for?” Thompson asked Susan Gile, executive director of the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts.

She said it would be up to lawmakers whether they wanted to list in statute the exact ailments that medical marijuana could be prescribed for or leave it to physicians and their patients.

Testimony from supporters, opponents

Committee members heard from supporters and opponents of legalization, state agency heads and officials from Utah and Mississippi, two conservative states where medical marijuana programs have been implemented.

“One thing we would request is label approval like we do for alcohol,” said Debbi Beavers, director of the Kansas Alcoholic Beverage Control, which has been named as the primary regulator in a number of unsuccessful bills aiming for medical marijuana.

She said it would be important to ensure that packaging for medical marijuana is black and white or neutral to avoid making it appealing to children. “If it’s a medical program, it should look like a medical program.”

But Beavers said from her agency’s perspective, “starting with recreational marijuana would be easier and less expensive to implement.” Sixty-seven percent of Kansas residents surveyed in a 2023 Fort Hays State opinion survey supported legalizing recreational marijuana for people 21 and older to allow for state taxation.

“With a medical program, you’ve got the physicians, the pharmacists, the (Kansas Department of Health and Environment), the medical cards, and you’ve got all these systems that have got to talk to each other,” Beavers said.

Lawmakers also heard testimony from a parade of law enforcement officer groups stating their opposition to any form of legalization and expressing concerns about implementation, including whether prisoners in correctional facilities would be allowed to obtain cannabis and what local departments would do with K-9 dogs who were trained to sniff it out.

What comes next?

Kansas’ path forward on medical marijuana reform will likely be determined by the outcome of November’s election when every seat in the Legislature will be on the ballot.

State senator Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat, said she sees Thompson and other anti-marijuana panel members “gathering ammunition” to continue their opposition to legalization.

Holscher said it’s time for Kansas to move on with its plan for reform in light of the federal rescheduling effort, which was initiated by President Joe Biden.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have both stated their support for pro-cannabis policies.

Despite her support for legalization, Holscher opposed the medical marijuana pilot program last session.

“It created a monopoly, and I don’t think that’s the right approach,” Holscher said. “And additionally, it just really limited access. The important aspect here is that we want patients who are suffering to have another option, and if we put in place a program that doesn’t do that, then we’re not going in the right direction.”

El Dorado Republican state senator Michael Fagg, who was appointed to oversee the medical marijuana hearings, said the special committee’s purpose is “fact-finding.”

“We’re not trying to go in leaning one direction or another,” Fagg said.

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