Tag: medical marijuana

Lawmakers plan to introduce medical marijuana legislation at start of session

At second-to-last committee meeting on medical marijuana, lawmakers express cautious optimism

by Rachel Mipro, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — After months of meetings, compiling data and listening to research, lawmakers say they’re ready to take another shot at legalizing medical marijuana.

Sen. Rob Olson, R-Olathe, and chair of the 2022 Special Committee on Medical Marijuana, said he planned to introduce a medical marijuana bill at the beginning of the January legislative session. Olson said passing legislation out of committee would be too difficult, and he planned to introduce it in the Senate as an alternative approach.

“I think what I’m going to do is — and any member is more than welcome — is to take this information and create the bill,” Olson said. “And I’m going to work on a bill with a couple members and then if anybody wants to sign on in the Senate, they’ll be more than able to sign onto that bill, and introduce it at the beginning of session.”

He encouraged lawmakers in the House to introduce similar legislation.

“I think that’s probably the best way forward,” Olson said.

The road to legalizing medical marijuana has been a long and rocky one, with Kansans and lawmakers divided. During Friday’s committee meeting, several members of the audience wore stickers reading, “Kansas says ‘No,’ ” to register their disapproval of limited legalization.

“Opening up that window leads to all kinds of corruption,” Wichita resident Denise Meirowsky said. She said her experiences with her 19-year-old son, who uses marijuana as self-medication for mental and emotional issues, showed her the negative influence of marijuana.

“It causes him not to have any ambition, not want to work, not want to do anything because of the abuse of marijuana. I haven’t been convinced yet of the medical benefits. I’ve seen personally what it’s done to my own son,” Meirowsky said.

On the other side of the room, Wichita State University senior Laura Cunningham, who was there as part of a school assignment, said she supported legalization of medical marijuana as a step forward for Kansas.

“I feel like a lot of people who do smoke marijuana are very productive members of society, and actually function better because of it. I think a lot of people have found this balance that is appropriate for them as an individual, and that’s what really matters. I don’t think that legalizing marijuana is going to necessarily cause this huge influx of people not having the motivation to participate in society,” Cunningham said.

During the meeting, lawmakers were given overviews of research on marijuana product packaging and labeling, limitations to amounts of medical marijuana that one person can possess, local taxation for marijuana and procedures for allowing medical marijuana access for incarcerated people. The feeling in the room seemed to be that the lawmakers had been given all the necessary information, with the meeting ending about three hours earlier than expected.

“You’ve had eight state agencies visit with you, you’ve had nine or 10 research memos by the legislative research department, you’ve had over 60 conferees that have testified in two days before this committee and you have reviewed a couple of bills that were alive last session and so on. In other words, you’ve been inundated with information,” said Mike Heim, a staff member in the Office of Revisor of Statutes, while giving his overview to lawmakers.

In 2021, the Kansas House approved medical marijuana legalization, but Senate Bill 560, which would have allowed for the cultivation, distribution, processing, dispensing and purchase of marijuana and paraphernalia, died in committee during the last days of the legislative session.

Senate President Ty Masterson said budget and school funding legislation were a higher priority to him than medical marijuana.

Sen. Cindy Holscher, D-Overland Park, said she hoped medical marijuana legalization legislation would pass the Senate this time, but she remembered of last year’s failure.

“The whole issue is last year, we had a very strong bill that passed the House, and Senate President Ty Masterson wouldn’t allow it to move forward. So I know there are different parties who have been reaching out to him to remind him of how important an issue this is to a lot of different people. So time will tell,” Holscher said.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/12/11/lawmakers-plan-to-introduce-medical-marijuana-legislation-at-start-of-session/

An armored car company, busted for hauling legal weed money across Kansas, is now suing the feds

Empyreal Logistics says federal and state law enforcement agencies are targeting its armored cars ‘because it is very profitable for those law enforcement agencies to seize the cash proceeds that Empyreal is transporting and keep that money using civil forfeiture.‘

by Dan Margolies, KCUR and Kansas News Service

An armored car company used by licensed marijuana dispensaries in Missouri and other states is suing the federal government, claiming law enforcement agents have illegally seized dispensary cash the company was transporting.

The federal lawsuit, filed in California last week by Empyreal Logistics, comes after a sheriff’s deputy in Dickinson County, Kansas, stopped one of Empyreal’s vehicles last year on Interstate 70 for an unspecified traffic violation and seized nearly $166,000 in cash it was transporting from marijuana dispensaries in Kansas City, Missouri, to a credit union in Colorado.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas subsequently filed a civil forfeiture action against Empyreal, arguing the seized cash was traceable to sales that violated the federal Controlled Substances Act. (Cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug under the act.) That case is pending.

In October, KCUR sought records related to the stop from the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office under the Kansas Open Records Act. Doug Thompson, the Dickinson County counselor, responded by saying that the records were in the hands of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

KCUR then sought the records from the DEA in November under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The DEA has yet to respond to KCUR’s request.

Empyreal’s lawsuit, however, alleges that Dickinson County Sheriff’s Deputy Kalen Robinson pulled over Empyreal’s vehicle, a Ford Transit van, as it was heading east on I-70 because the Colorado license plate tag was slightly covered by the license plate holder. Robinson stopped the vehicle a second time the next day as it was heading west toward Colorado and seized the cash.

Empyreal’s lawsuit accuses Robinson as well as sheriff’s deputies in California of acting in concert with the DEA to conduct “pretextual stops” of Empyreal’s vehicles, “searching them, and seizing the cash contents — covering up their surveillance cameras and sometimes damaging Empyreal’s vehicles to access the cash in their secured vaults — and are then turning the seized cash over to federal law-enforcement for forfeiture proceedings under the federal equitable sharing program.”

Under the federal equitable sharing program, the federal government shares assets seized in civil forfeitures with state and local law enforcement agencies.

Empyreal says that not a single traffic citation was issued to an Empyreal driver during any of the five traffic stops mentioned in its complaint.

It says federal and state law enforcement agencies are targeting its armored cars “because it is very profitable for those law enforcement agencies to seize the cash proceeds that Empyreal is transporting and keep that money using civil forfeiture.”

Dan Alban, an attorney with the Institute of Justice, which represents Empyreal, said Empyreal had initially viewed the Dickinson County stop as a one-off event. But since then, its vehicles have been stopped four more times in California, three of them in the last two months alone. The vehicles were transporting cash from state-licensed cannabis businesses in California.

“I think they began to become very concerned that this was an ongoing pattern of activity and that they were being targeted. And so they wanted not just to have to defend against these forfeiture actions after the fact” but to seek legal relief preventing future seizures, Alban said.

In addition to alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment and due process, the lawsuit seeks to block future stops, searches and seizures of Empyreal’s vehicles “based solely on the actual or suspected presence of cash earned by state-legal cannabis dispensaries without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”

‘Writing on the wall’

“Empyreal could see the writing on the wall,” Alban said. “They could tell they were being targeted — all of these stops and searches — five in total so far. And so in order to continue operating their armored car business, they needed not to be targeted by the feds or local sheriffs for these continued stops, searches and seizures.”

Empyreal is still seeking to recover the money that was seized in Kansas in the pending civil forfeiture proceeding. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has declined to comment on the case.

The forfeiture action is being prosecuted by Colin D. Wood, a retired KBI senior special agent who now serves as a federal contractor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office with the title of Special Assistant U.S. Attorney. He did not respond to a request for comment.

The traffic stop in Dickinson County took place last May. The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed the civil forfeiture action three months later.

Attorneys not involved in the case have questioned why it was brought, given that it doesn’t involve the seizure of marijuana but rather proceeds from its sale and given that the dispensaries whose money was seized are licensed under Missouri’s medical cannabis program.

During the Obama administration, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum stating that federal prosecutors would not enforce the federal prohibition against marijuana in states that had legalized it. And federal legislation enacted in 2014 prohibits the Justice Department from spending funds to interfere with the implementation of state medical cannabis laws.

The legislation, known as the Rohrbacher-Farr amendment, must be renewed every year. It was renewed last year and remains effective through Feb. 18.

In its lawsuit, Empyreal says it has been forced to suspend its operations in San Bernardino, County, California, has stopped transporting cash through Kansas, has lost customers and has been unable to roll out new services in multiple states because of concerns about the stops and seizures.

“If these incidents continue to occur — and there is every indication they will — it will threaten Empyreal’s business model and its ability to continue providing financial infrastructure for the state-legal medical cannabis industry by safely moving cash from business premises into the legal banking system for greater transparency,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit names as defendants the U.S. Department of Justice; Attorney General Merrick Garland; the FBI; FBI Director Christopher Wray; an assistant FBI director overseeing the bureau’s Los Angeles field office; the DEA; DEA Administrator Anne Milgram; and San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon D. Dicus.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.

See more at https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-01-19/an-armored-car-company-busted-for-hauling-legal-weed-money-across-kansas-is-now-suing-the-feds

Kansas considers making medical marijuana legal, but very hard to get

Only specially certified doctors could recommend cannabis, and only to their long-term patients.

by Stephen Koranda, Kansas News Service

Kansas stands among a shrinking handful of states that makes cannabis an outlaw drug, even as a medical tool.

Lawmakers trying to overcome resistance to any legalization are looking at adopting medical marijuana rules so tight that, for instance, only patients who’ve been with specially certified doctors for a full year could get it.

A bill in the House borrows and tweaks strict limitations tried in other states. Backers hope the plan can overcome long-standing opposition from some conservative Republicans and law enforcement groups.

Republican Senate President Ty Masterson said he doesn’t want a system where anyone can get a marijuana recommendation.

“You don’t really believe we have that many 18-year-olds with glaucoma that need to smoke weed for a medical benefit,” he said. “That’s recreational.”

To win over people like Masterson, this year’s bill borrows restrictive policies tried elsewhere.

From Ohio, the latest Kansas plan takes the idea that only physicians with a specific certification could recommend marijuana for about two dozen conditions ranging from seizures to chronic pain. Plus, the marijuana could not be smoked, but would be available in other forms like edibles and oils.

The Kansas plan borrows an idea from New Jersey’s medical marijuana law and makes it even more limiting. Patients would need to see one of those certified physicians for a year before getting a recommendation for marijuana.
State regulators could also create alternate ways to establish that physician relationship in the future.

The limits have attracted support from some Republicans. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has also said she supports legalizing medical marijuana. She proposed using revenue from medical cannabis to pay for Medicaid expansion, but that bill isn’t getting traction.

Under the plan being considered in the House, Kansas would legalize medicinal marijuana with some of the tighter rules in the country. Even with that, it still must overcome opposition from some conservative Republicans and influential law enforcement groups.

Law enforcement groups say because marijuana is illegal under federal law, state legalization establishes a conflict. It also creates other issues, like requiring a database so officers can verify medical marijuana ID cards.

In Ohio, a law that was nearly as restrictive as the Kansas proposal overcame opposition and took effect two years ago.

“We thought we were late to the dance. You guys are way behind us,” said Ohio advocate Mary Jane Borden, who helped the Ohio Rights Group push for that state’s law.

Borden said the tight rules in Ohio create some challenges. In some areas, there’s a shortage of doctors with a marijuana certification and places to buy cannabis.

Kansas could end up in the same spot, leaving people in rural areas with no practical place to get a doctor’s recommendation or supplies.

“I would really consider, ‘How do you reach the people?’” Borden said, “‘the suffering patients, in those outlying counties?’”

In Ohio, the most common use for medical marijuana is treatment of chronic pain.

Eric Voth is a retired Kansas physician who specialized in internal medicine, pain and addiction. He said claims of pain can be a loophole. He said the law should have additional oversight to regulate physicians recommending medical cannabis.

“First of all, what constitutes the pain?” Voth said in an interview. “What is required for the diagnosis … and the supervision?”

Voth wants most of the uses in the bill removed and restrictions added for the use of marijuana to treat pain. He’d also only allow lower concentrations of THC, the chemical that makes people high.

Most of all, Voth is telling lawmakers not to give in to the legalization movement.

“I’d hold it up as a badge of honor,” Voth said, “to say we’ve held back this tidal wave.”

Stephen Koranda is the Statehouse reporter for Kansas Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @Stephen_Koranda.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
See more at https://www.kcur.org/news/2021-03-22/kansas-considers-making-medical-marijuana-legal-but-very-hard-to-get.