Kansas police are once again saying no to drugs — including medical marijuana.
On Tuesday, groups representing police chiefs, sheriffs and peace officers across the state continued to shoot down the idea of legalizing medical marijuana. They argued that legal weed would create a more lawless Kansas where cartels roam the streets and opioid deaths jump.
They took issue with everything from possible state regulations to the foul smell of cannabis.
“You drive by Blackwell, Oklahoma, and you get hit with that odor,” Kechi Chief of Police Braden Moore told lawmakers. “That’s a quality of life thing. … I don’t want that in my home state, too.”
The 2024 Special Committee on Medical Marijuana, with five senators and six House members, is meeting in Topeka. What’s supposed to be a special committee that doesn’t meet yearly is becoming an annual fixture in Kansas. Lawmakers have discussed medical cannabis each year since 2021 and are setting up another conversation in the 2025 legislative session.
Political squabbles have squelched multiple bills to legalize medical marijuana in the Kansas Statehouse. And opposition from law enforcement in the state has remained steady.
In 2023 the Kansas Bureau of Investigation opposed a medicinal program because weed is a Schedule I drug under federal law, meaning they have no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. That groups cannabis with heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is rescheduling marijuana to a lower severity level, putting it on par with ketamine and certain anabolic steroids.
That hasn’t changed law enforcement opposition.
Bel Aire Police Chief Darrell Atteberry, legislative committee chair with the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police, said his group will oppose legal or medicinal marijuana if it isn’t approved by the FDA or Drug Enforcement Agency.
Atteberry acknowledged that rescheduling is happening, but he said that is still years away.
Police warned lawmakers that legalizing weed:
- Could lead to fully recreational marijuana in the future.
- Could lead to marijuana-incuded psychosis and an increase risk of suicide for veterans with PTSD.
- Would increase black-market drug activity, bringing more cartels into Kansas.
- Would increase the number of weed-related hospital visits.
- Would make the current stock of drug-sniffing dogs obsolete and require a new set of canines, which can cost $20,000 to buy and train one dog.
- Require more KBI agents, more equipment and more testing abilities to enforce any future laws.
“After 43 years in law enforcement,” Atteberry said, “and all the bills that I’ve read …. I see this as a train wreck. I mean, whether it’s medical marijuana (or) recreational — it’s going to be a train wreck for law enforcement.”
He said a medical weed program could lead to recreational pot.
“We need to stay away from that as far as we can,” he said.
A majority of Kansans support legal weed. A 2023 Kansas Speaks survey found that 67% of respondents want legal weed programs like Missouri and Colorado. Oklahoma has legalized medical marijuana. Nebraska has not.
Kansas is slowly becoming one of the last states to allow the drug — nearly 40 states have medicinal cannabis programs.
Rep. Nick Hoheisel, a Wichita Republican, pushed back on the problems police see with the program. Hoheisel lives in a city where simple possession charges aren’t prosecuted. He said if medical weed is so bad and brings so many problems, why aren’t people being arrested?
“We have claims that it sends them into anger and rage fits and causes violence,” he said. “It just seems to me like we’re saying it’s serious and this is a very bad thing, but it’s not quite bad enough that we need to arrest people.”
Ellis County Sheriff Scott Braun, president of the Kansas Sheriffs’ Association, said police make those arrests but the courts and prosecutors have the final say.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
