Kansas legislature convened, let’s put cannabis on the agenda!

Kansas is an outlier when it comes to cannabis policy. Two of its neighbors have legalized cannabis for adults 21 and older — Colorado and Missouri. Neighboring Oklahoma has a broad medical cannabis law, and Nebraska has a decades-old “decriminalization” law as well as a voter-passed medical cannabis law, an option that the Kansas Constitution does not offer.

Meanwhile, Kansas remains one of only 10 states that do not have a comprehensive medical cannabis program.

It’s up to the legislature to reform Kansas’s outdated and unjust cannabis laws. If you live in Kansas, Senate leadership needs to hear from you to schedule hearings for medical cannabis!

Significant groundwork has already been laid. Kansas lawmakers held an exhaustive set of hearings in the Summer of 2022 on medical cannabis. The Kansas House has passed medical cannabis bills in the past, only to be ignored in the Senate. In the last legislative session, a medical cannabis bill was introduced — SB294 — but was not granted a hearing. The bill needs to be taken up in 2026 or advocates need to start from scratch again in 2027.