Kansas GOP warns of "child trafficking" and "death", among other things, if medical marijuana is legalized

Every week, the Kansas GOP publishes a newsletter called ‘The Friday File’ which gives updates on things Kansas Republicans should look out for whether it’s important events coming up, dates to remember, or things going on in the Kansas Legislature. In last week’s Friday File, Kansas Republicans made sure to instill fear into readers about the legalization of medical marijuana. This is likely because on April 26, lawmakers will return to the Capitol, and the Kansas Senate will take up a motion by Sen. Robert Olson, a Republican from Johnson County, to pull a bill legalizing medical marijuana out of committee.

In the newsletter, Kansas GOP Chair Mike Brown highlighted two problems that he claims would occur if Kansas were to legalize medicinal marijuana:

“1. Medicinal marijuana leads to recreational marijuana. It is demonstrable in state after state and our neighbor to the south, Oklahoma, has seen the very real downside of legalized marijuana and is now working to reel it back in. Wrecked lives, death, organized crime, gangs, child trafficking, prostitution, and myriad other bad things come with marijuana. All of these points make marijuana a “no-go” for the vast majority of Republicans.

“2. The part of marijuana that is “medicinal” is called CBD. This extract can be purchased without the other parts of marijuana and CBD is already legal in Kansas. The marijuana [of today is not] the same weed as we all knew about in the 1960’s-early 1990’s. It is MUCH more potent… And dangerous. The bottom line is this: there is no need for any legalization of marijuana in Kansas.”

I found both of these claims to be really interesting, and I feel that if Republicans are going to make such serious claims, then we need to look at these claims seriously just to understand how much truth they actually hold.

In the first claim, they use Oklahoma as the example of why legalized marijuana is a bad deal. This was shocking to me, because Colorado and Missouri have marijuana fully legalized while Oklahoma does not. Due to this, I decided to look into Oklahoma’s marijuana laws to get a better understanding, and I found a local media outlet that had some really interesting reporting on the issue back from February of 2022:

“Unlike other states, you don’t need a qualifying medical condition to get a card, so about 380,000 Oklahomans have one. For comparison, at the height of Colorado’s medical marijuana boom, before it became legal recreationally in 2012, there were just 128,000 who had a card.

“Another low barrier of entry is cost. It costs just $2,500 to secure a business license here. In Colorado, it will cost you about $7,500 and in Arkansas, it costs $100,000.

“There are also no caps on the number of dispensaries, individual plants or grow operations. The numbers fluctuate often, but at current check, there are more than 7,500 licensed growers in Oklahoma, which is more than six times the amount of medical and recreational grows combined in Colorado.”

Mark Woodard with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics (OBN) was interviewed for this article where he stated that Oklahoma was “the number one source state now for black market illicit marijuana.”

“He said that the OBN is busy working to bust these criminal operations. He said that these criminals are bringing in illegal labor trafficking, nefarious activity and even foreign cartels into our state.

“‘They’ve just expanded to include marijuana and their criminal enterprises because there’s absolutely tremendous profit margin,’ Woodward said.”

Medical marijuana has been legal in Oklahoma since 2018, and according to the above reporting from 2022, the OBN has shut down 90 illegal farms–most of which were in rural Oklahoma. However, according to Woodard, most farms are legal and looking at the “bigger picture.”

In 2023, Oklahomans rejected a statutory ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. After this ballot initiative, reporting from Politico showed that the Oklahoma market was starting to shrink. One thing they noted was “heightened enforcement by state regulators and law enforcement” which was pushing to shut some businesses down. However, a more notable thing that was lowering the number of businesses was not government overreach, but rather capitalism at work.

“Others are simply realizing that Oklahoma is producing so much weed—a staggering 64 times the volume needed to serve the state’s medical patients, according to a recent study—that it’s impossible to make any money,” the article reads.

I think this is really important to note. Despite what Republicans say, when it gets down to it, they absolutely hate capitalism. They do not trust it to work, and so they do believe in big government overreach to infringe on the free market, and medical marijuana is a shining example of this. Yes, trafficking and other crimes did appear in a market that the government has stifled for decades, but given enough time through the free market, businesses–including illegal businesses–start disappearing as they realize there is no money to be made with so much competition, leaving only the best businesses to continue to serve the public. Without the free market, the only businesses that are able to succeed are the illegal ones, and that’s all thanks to the government.

I also want to note another important thing: In the 2022 article, it was noted that gangs were growing marijuana in Oklahoma and then selling it for huge profit in other states. That in itself is a market that legal marijuana growers cannot touch due to federal jurisdiction taking place when the product crosses state lines, and since the federal law prohibits marijuana, this would be an illegal act. Meaning, gangs are literally encouraged by the government to grow in one state for cheap and sell in another state at a large profit since other marijuana businesses cannot do this. 

Politico’s article further states:

“But with the defeat of the ballot measure—every single county in the state voted against it—they’re now hoping that enough firms will fail that it will be more feasible to run a financially successful business.

“’A lot of people just can’t pay their bills,’ said Jeff Henderson, co-founder of PYRE, which operates a 4,800-square-foot grow facility in Muskogee. ‘Some people have no margin whatsoever. There’s not a lot of money to go around.’”

This is literally capitalism at work if Republican lawmakers would just give it enough time to work instead of overreacting to the issues that the government caused in the first place. And here’s the thing, the free market will make businesses, regardless of legality, go out of business if they can’t provide a product or service people want, whereas the government can only restrict legal businesses and will do so to the point that they actually aid illegal businesses.

As for the claim about us not needing medical marijuana because we have CBD, which Republicans claim is the “medicinal part of marijuana,” I did have doubts with this. I decided to reach out to Kansas Cannabis Coalition where Cheryl Kumberg RN, a cannabis nurse, was able to provide me with more information. Kumberg stated in an email to The Kansas Constitutional that the “medicinal” part of marijuana being called CBD is “misinformation.”  

“As far as it being purchased without the other parts of marijuana shows a complete lack of plant knowledge,” Kumberg wrote. “CBD comes from hemp, a low THC plant there is very little CBD in marijuana.”

Kumberg went into the history of cannabis, noting that it has been documented for over a thousand years as a “healing plant” and that “there has never been a death attributed to whole plant cannabis overconsumption.” She did note that this is in regards to cannabis alone and not when combined with other drugs.

“In 2003 the Department of Health and Human services after researching CBD took out a patent on it,” Kumberg wrote in her email. “Yes, they kept it quiet while thousands suffered and could have used it for healing. They knew it had neuroprotective benefits, was an anti-inflammatory and strong antioxidant. All this knowledge, scientific proof and it has been kept on drug schedule 1 when it clearly does not meet the criteria. It is also worth noting that for over 50 years the U.S. government has spent millions of dollars supporting cannabis research in Israel.” 

Kumberg explained how cannabis works, noting that the receptors in our bodies “were made to react specifically to whole plant cannabis constituents.” She also noted that for over 40 years, science has shown that our bodies naturally produce anandamide and 2 AG, which are lipid compounds that is almost exactly the same chemically as THC and CBD. She further stated that CBD has different healing abilities compared to THC.

“CBD has been proven to work more effectively if it has all the plant constituents, this includes small amounts of THC,” Kumberg wrote. “Someone who is looking for neuroprotective effects may want to use a product that is 6 parts CBD to one part THC. There is a lot to be considered when choosing a product. There is no one size fits all cannabis “dose” because as individuals we all react differently to cannabis cultivar just as we do to pharmaceuticals.”

According to Kumberg, herbal medicine and pharmaceutical medications are not the same as our bodies use all of the plant constituents in order to heal when using herbs. However, pharmaceuticals are typically a single compound with a predictable outcome and commonly accepted side effects which can include death.

Recent findings from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding medical marijuana have also shown that marijuana today is not as dangerous as Kansas Republicans want people to believe. In fact, their findings, which included evidence of medical benefits, was based on eight different scientific criteria. This includes: Potential for abuse, the state of current
scientific knowledge, and its likelihood for physiological and psychological dependence. This finding has led the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to recommend rescheduling marijuana from schedule I (drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse) to schedule III (drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence). This letter to the FDA by the DHHS was only made public in January of this year.

The Kansas GOP’s remarks regarding medical marijuana are serious claims, but clearly, when you actually look into such claims, there is more fearmongering than fact in what they say.