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Amy Reid is severe about medical marijuana.
She’s a Wichita registered nurse and president of the Kansas Cannabis Coalition. She describes herself as a hashish navigator for her sufferers, and he or she is all enterprise in terms of advocating for medical weed. I couldn’t assist however chuckle when she informed me the title of a sister group, the Kansas Cannabis Chamber of Commerce. She requested me what was so humorous.
Um, the title, I mentioned, responsible as a schoolboy. The exhausting Ok, the alliteration, all ending with “chamber of commerce.” It was like no chamber I’d ever heard of, however the one one I would wish to be a part of.
It’s not humorous, Reid informed me. There are folks in Kansas who want medical marijuana to alleviate their ache, particularly from most cancers, and it’s much better than utilizing opioids. It was an outrage, she mentioned, that any individual dwelling on the Missouri facet of the river in Kansas Metropolis had protected and authorized entry to medical marijuana, whereas simply a few blocks away in Kansas the identical sufferers danger a felony conviction.
“We’re merely asking our lawmakers to permit Kansas residents entry to the therapeutic results of this superb plant,” Reid informed me. “Three of our 4 neighboring states permit this, and it’s time Kansas stepped out of the ‘Reefer Madness’ mentality and allowed sufferers to have a alternative.”
I’m sympathetic to Reid’s quest, however the historical past of Prohibition in Kansas runs deep.
Take the case of Stella Van Oster.
Stella lived in Backyard Metropolis and made frequent journeys to go to buddies throughout the state line in La Junta, Colorado. Her title seems usually in Kansas newspapers of the Nineteen Twenties, giving invocations because the nationwide chaplain for the Sons and Daughters of Justice, a fraternal advantages society that bought life insurance coverage insurance policies. As a girl within the Nineteen Twenties — the last decade when Bernice bobbed her hair, the jazz ran scorching and the occasion appeared unending — Stella naturally wished a automotive, and he or she purchased one on a fee plan at a Backyard Metropolis dealership. The storage stored the automotive on retention and, with Stella’s permission, generally used it for enterprise.
And that’s the place the difficulty started.
A storage worker, Clyde Brown, borrowed the automotive to move slightly moonshine. This being the Prohibition, that was unlawful. Finney County Sheriff Oil Brown (any relation to Clyde? I don’t know, however what an amazing title), was a well-known booze hunter. He as soon as had been run over by bootleggers and survived. The automotive that hit him had been confiscated, bought at public sale, and given to Oil. So when Oil and his boys arrested Clyde — after allegedly seeing him toss a bottle of hootch out the window — they naturally seized the automotive. When Clyde was acquitted by a Finney County jury, Stella naturally wished her automotive again. She hadn’t given her permission for the automotive for use in bootlegging! And Clyde had been discovered not responsible.
No cube, a district choose mentioned. Though Clyde wasn’t discovered responsible, the automotive was. It had been used to move intoxicating spirits and, following federal precedent that went all the best way again to the seizure of a pirate ship, the Palmyra, by the U.S. Navy in 1822, the choose declared the seizure authorized.
Stella was outraged.
She employed an legal professional, a former U.S. senator from Kansas, who vowed to struggle the case all the best way to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom — and did. However in 1926, the Supreme Courtroom dominated in Van Oster v. Kansas that the seizure of Stella’s automotive was constitutional. In one other ruling introduced on the similar time, One Ford Coupe v. United States, the courtroom issued an identical ruling, saying the plaintiff (the automotive!) was responsible and could possibly be seized as a result of it had as soon as transported unlawful intoxicating liquors with out paying the tax imposed on mentioned liquor.
Sure, inanimate objects corresponding to vehicles and boats and airplanes and homes and particularly piles of money will be discovered responsible in a civil courtroom of regulation in the USA, the place the burden of proof is lower than in a legal case, and brought from their house owners, even when the house owners don’t have any data of the thing’s dangerous habits.
Now, let’s quick ahead about 90 years.
However we’re nonetheless in Backyard Metropolis.
In 2015, Shona Banda was a 38-year-old therapeutic massage therapist and marijuana advocate. She had been utilizing marijuana, bought in Colorado, which had legalized pot the earlier yr, to deal with the ache attributable to Crohn’s disease, a severe inflammatory bowel situation. The difficulty started when her 11-year-old son spoke in protection of medical marijuana at his Backyard Metropolis faculty throughout a drug schooling seminar — “My mom smokes a lot!” — which sparked an investigation by social employees and native regulation enforcement. The child also said marijuana had saved his mother’s life. A Finney County detective interviewed the son, gathering detailed details about marijuana use within the dwelling, and the accessibility of hashish oil and paraphernalia to the boy. The knowledge was sworn to in an affidavit, which was used to acquire a warrant to go looking Shona’s dwelling. A bit over a pound of marijuana and diverse pipes and vaporizers have been seized. Shona was arrested, charged with 5 felony counts, and her son was quickly taken from her custody.
She confronted 30 years in jail.
Shona’s case grew to become floor zero for a global debate on medical marijuana.
Greater than 84,000 folks from across the globe signed a petition in assist of Shona, and a GoFundMe drive raised $40,000 for her protection. Even conservative speak present host Glenn Beck got here to her protection, questioning the knowledge of prosecuting pot crimes and criticizing the “smugness” of the cops who searched her dwelling. This may increasingly have been the one and solely time that Tea Get together fomenting Beck and I ever agreed on something.
After a two-year authorized battle, Shona accepted a plea deal through which she obtained 12 months of “mail in” probation and was allowed to maneuver to Spokane. She is, presumably, happier and more healthy in Washington, which was the second U.S. state to legalize leisure marijuana use. The world’s first legal retail marijuana sales started in Colorado in January 2014.
At present, of the 4 states that border Kansas, three have legalized some type of marijuana. Colorado is pot nirvana, and each Oklahoma and Missouri have medical pot. The fourth, Nebraska, had licensed a petition final yr to place medical marijuana to a statewide vote, however the query was faraway from the poll by the state’s supreme courtroom.
Though marijuana advocates are hopeful that a minimum of some sort of medical marijuana will probably be allowed in Kansas quickly, I’m not so optimistic. Kansas has an extended historical past of blocking each progress and good occasions. We appear to be obsessive about the concept any individual, someplace, is both having a very good time or feeling higher, and we have now to nip that within the bud.
Prohibition in Kansas lasted longer than in every other state, and much longer than nationwide prohibition. We outlawed booze method again to 1881 and caught with it till 1948. It wasn’t that Kansans didn’t drink throughout that point, however you needed to be artistic, corresponding to making your individual booze, going to a speakeasy, or getting a prescription out of your native pharmacy. Even after 1948, we prohibited liquor by the drink, and within the Nineteen Seventies Legal professional Basic Vern Miller did nutty issues corresponding to raid Amtrak trains and prohibit airways from serving liquor whereas flying over the state. We didn’t get liquor by the drink till 1987. Oh, and we nonetheless haven’t ratified the twenty first Modification, which ended nationwide Prohibition.
With regards to pot, I reckon we’ll be the final state to finish that prohibition, too.
We have now finished loads of nutty issues in terms of pot, corresponding to requiring drug sellers to purchase marijuana tax stamps. The pondering, as in Prohibition, is you can cost authorized taxes on unlawful actions and thereby deter the criminality and add money to the state’s coffers. In follow, nonetheless, about the one individuals who purchased the sticky issues have been stamp collectors. In 2014, the Kansas Supreme Court reversed itself and dominated that normally these convicted of marijuana dealing couldn’t even be anticipated to have the correct stamps.
Bear in mind the case with Stella’s automotive?
Primarily based partially on the precedent set by the Van Oster case, Kansas cops (and people throughout the nation) have collected hundreds of thousands of {dollars} over time in belongings seized throughout drug busts massive and small, with native companies getting a minimize of the proceeds. Till lately, we didn’t have an accounting within the state of how a lot was really seized, however nearly everyone knew that the majority of that money and different belongings got here from automotive stops. However in 2018, the Kansas Legislature handed a regulation that requires all companies to report intimately, and for the KBI to make public, an inventory of all forfeitures. If companies don’t comply, they aren’t allowed to proceed seizing property.
Kansas cops routinely foyer in opposition to any change within the state’s marijuana legal guidelines. Nationally, there was a transfer away from forfeiture legal guidelines, however there’s nonetheless a substantial monetary incentive for regulation enforcement to go looking and seize.
In 2020, in response to the newest report, Kansas cops seized $5 million in money and extra $1 million in property, overwhelmingly linked to drug-related incidents. About 60% of seizures occurred throughout site visitors stops and, total, 28% of householders weren’t arrested. Main the state in seizures was Neosho County, with 39 seizures. That’s for a county with fewer than 16,000 residents.
So, it’s no surprise that Kansas cops routinely foyer in opposition to any change within the state’s marijuana legal guidelines. Nationally, there was a transfer away from forfeiture legal guidelines, however there’s nonetheless a substantial monetary incentive for regulation enforcement to go looking and seize.
However Reid, the nurse hashish navigator, is optimistic.
She mentioned her group is constructing bipartisan assist and that she hears often from sympathetic Kansas legislators. Two medical marijuana payments, SB 158 and SB 315, she mentioned, have been launched late within the final session, and can stay in Senate committees till lawmakers return in 2022.
In the meantime, it’s nonetheless a criminal offense to deliver marijuana into the state from Missouri and Oklahoma. And if you happen to’re eager about bringing edibles again from Colorado, which include the THC-rich hashish oil that helped Banda along with her Crohn’s, be warned that you simply’re going through a felony. I like Colorado, and have been recognized to cease at a dispensary or two, though I go away my Rocky Mountain excessive behind.
But when any individual I liked had most cancers and solely marijuana would ease the ache?
I’d take that danger in a heartbeat.
Godspeed, hashish navigator.
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