[[{“value”:”Takeaways
Kansas lawmakers are likely going to act on medical marijuana in the 2025 session. Maybe.
Medical marijuana is becoming a perennial debate in Topeka, and it’s annually unclear how likely it is for a bill to pass.
“I have sat through, I don’t know, three interim committee meetings,” said Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat, at an interim committee on medical marijuana. “We keep rehashing this information. We keep hearing the same debunked theories over and over.”
That was in October. Holscher made a motion for the committee to support the passage of medical marijuana. The committee — made up of Senate and House members, Republicans and Democrats — rejected that motion.
“I just feel like we keep circling here by doing interim committees and never really moving forward on the issue,” Holscher said in October.
Instead, they made a motion to schedule another meeting in January to again debate medical marijuana.
That would imply that medical marijuana is of interest to lawmakers in 2025. But Kansas legislators have debated medical cannabis during the session or in a special committee in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Yet weed is still illegal.
What has the Legislature already done?
The Kansas House first approved a medical marijuana plan in 2021. It was a historic vote.
It was the first time the chamber ever gave medical marijuana a floor vote, and it passed 79-42. Republicans and Democrats had mostly come together on an issue to pass it and send the proposal to the Senate.
It’s the Senate where all the issues remain.
Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, wants a limited program to avoid the pitfalls other states have seen.
“I have consistently maintained that this is a serious topic,” Masterson previously told The Beacon, “which requires due diligence to determine if a better model is possible that achieves the goal of delivering real medicine while avoiding the myriad problems those other states have experienced.”
Take Oklahoma, for example. The state passed its medical marijuana program through a ballot initiative. It was the public who approved the measure and brought medical weed to the state. That meant lawmakers have been passing laws to regulate the industry on the fly.
Some conservatives say Oklahoma has an industry so unregulated that it has essentially become a recreational weed program with a thriving black market. Masterson has no desire for Kansas to go down that path.
Lawmakers did have a medical marijuana proposal in 2024, but the program was so strict that it scared away longtime advocates.
Who supports the proposal?
Support doesn’t fall along partisan lines.
It mostly does, but a swatch of Republicans support a medical marijuana proposal. There is also a chunk of lawmakers unsure about the idea.
Last session, the medical marijuana bill was stalling out. So a group of senators tried to force a vote on the issue. They needed 24 out of 40 senators to bring the bill up for a vote. They got 12. Of the 12 senators, 10 were Democrats and two were Republicans. Both those Republicans didn’t run for reelection.
Who opposes the proposal?
Conservatives generally oppose the bill. Republicans control the House and Senate, and Republican leadership could likely pass a medical cannabis bill whenever it desires. Yet the idea has stalled.
Law enforcement is also wary of medical marijuana.
“You drive by Blackwell, Oklahoma, and you get hit with that odor,” Kechi Chief of Police Braden Moore told lawmakers in October. “That’s a quality of life thing. … I don’t want that in my home state, too.”
“}]] Medical marijuana has stalled since it passed the House in 2021. But the issue could come up again in the 2025 session. Read More
