A special legislative committee on medical cannabis declined to recommend that lawmakers legalize patient access in 2025.
By Anna Kaminski, Kansas Reflector
A wide majority of Kansans support legalizing medical and recreational marijuana, but a group of legislators assigned to weigh medical marijuana legalization declined to push the issue in the 2025 session.
About 73 percent of respondents to the Kansas Speaks survey either strongly or somewhat supported the legalization of medical marijuana and 12 percent were opposed. About 61 percent of respondents either strongly or somewhat supported the legalization of recreational marijuana and about 22 percent were opposed, according to the annual survey, conducted by Fort Hays State University’s Docking Institute of Public Affairs.
The same day survey results were released, October 28, legislators on the special committee on medical marijuana decided to commission a report informing the Legislature on updated details of a medical marijuana program in Kansas but voted against recommending legislation to their peers in 2025.
Alexandra Middlebrook, Wichita State University’s political science department chair and a policy fellow with the Docking Institute, says marijuana is not a major consideration when voters weigh candidates and head to the ballot box.
“Because it’s not a priority for them, it’s not going to be a priority for elected officials either,” she said.
The majority of legislators on the medical marijuana committee weren’t in favor of meeting as a group in the 2025 session, saying it wouldn’t be enough time to wade through legal uncertainty.
Convening in January would be insufficient, said Rep. Steve Howe, R-Salina. The Nov. 5 election also could change the makeup of the committee.
Sen. Cindy Holscher, D-Overland Park, said legislators keep circling the issue without making progress.
“We keep rehashing this information,” she said. “We keep hearing the same debunked theories over and over.”
This was the first year the Docking Institute directly asked about marijuana legalization, but the survey has contained questions about marijuana irregularly since 2015. Support for both recreational and medical legalization has increased over time. The annual survey asked respondents in 2024 whether they would support recreational marijuana legalization and medical marijuana legalization in addition to questions about taxation and whether they’d vote for a state candidate who supports medical legalization.
In 2015, about 68 percent of respondents favored medical marijuana legalization. In 2024, that support jumped by five percentage points.
The common thread, Middlebrook said, is Kansas is losing tax revenue to the three surrounding states—Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma—that have approved some form of a taxable marijuana system.
“All three of them legalized marijuana by ballot initiative, specifically by initiative petition,” she said.
Statewide citizen initiative ballot measures are not allowed under the Kansas Constitution, which leaves it to the Legislature to take up the issue. With the state’s comparatively short legislative session, marijuana takes a back seat to higher priority issues for both political parties, Middlewood said.
At the Monday medical marijuana hearing, lawmakers heard from law enforcement officials, policy advocates, health care professionals, farmers, bankers and cannabis industry professionals.
A handful of law enforcement, mental health and medical professionals advocated against a medical program based on personal experiences. Farmers, professionals and policy advocates, on the other hand, testified in support.
Kelly Rippel with Kansans for Hemp and the Planted Association of Kansas, emphasized the differences between hemp, a crop used for industrial purposes, and marijuana. The two are different types of the same plant, but hemp contains only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive component that gives marijuana users a “high.” Rippel told legislators that hemp grows well throughout Kansas.
“There are two facts when it comes to drug policy,” Rippel said. “Having adaptable solutions that are based in accurate information that meet people where they are, and second, a commercially unregulated market of any drug means that market is in the hands of criminals. That opens up a lot of risk.”
Marijuana was classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, making all uses federally illegal and warranting the most severe penalties. President Richard Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973 to enforce the act, effectively criminalizing marijuana, despite recommendations calling the total prohibition of marijuana “functionally inappropriate,” according to an overview of marijuana history from the Kansas Legislative Research Department.
Kansas has its own controlled substances schedule on which marijuana is a Schedule I substance. The Kansas Attorney General’s Office has been opposed to any legalization.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas submitted testimony Monday advocating for decriminalization. In 2023, law enforcement made more than 4,600 arrests for marijuana possession and an estimated 380 arrests for marijuana sales, wrote Rashane Hamby, the director of policy and research for the ACLU of Kansas, in submitted testimony. The majority of the arrests, 91 percent, were not for drug trafficking or violent crime but instead for simple possession, Hamby wrote.
“The ACLU’s national report on marijuana arrests revealed that in Kansas, Black residents are 4.8 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white residents, despite similar rates of use across racial groups,” Hamby wrote.
In Wichita, the population is 10 percent Black, but Black people make up about 45 percent of all marijuana related prosecutions, Hamby wrote.
Research has shown marijuana acts as an effective aid in pain management, and it has been approved for medical use in 38 states. It is regulated similarly to alcohol and tobacco for recreational use in 24 states.
This story was first published by Kansas Reflector.
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