TOPEKA — State law enforcement, local prosecutors and a lobbyist convinced legalization of medical marijuana posed the greatest threat to quality of life in Kansas tried to quietly squeeze into a bill lowering fees on industrial hemp producers an amendment that could send wayward farmers to prison for years.
The threshold between freedom and incarceration under the amendment advocated by the executive director of Stand Up for Kansas, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association would be a laboratory test measuring whether a hemp product had a THC content greater than 1%. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state of Kansas allow harvesting, processing and marketing of hemp with less than 0.3% THC.
“I just need help understanding who are we going after? I hope it’s not our industrial hemp producers,” said Sen. Carolyn McGinn, a Sedgwick Republican and farmer. “Is there some place we can look to find out how much this is being abused? I’m trying to understand where all the abuse is at.”
Stand Up for Kansas leader Katie Whisman said she couldn’t document the threat posed by crooked hemp farmers. The former KBI administrator did say establishment of industrial hemp as a row crop in Kansas created “a lot of confusion for law enforcement” personnel. She said one source of frustration was the challenge of differentiating between legal hemp and illegal marijuana.
“They look the same,” she said. “They smell the same. Is that hemp? Is that marijuana? How do we enforce that?”
Third-level sentencing
Current Kansas law mandated legal industrial hemp products contain less than 0.3% THC. Existing state statute says first-time violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and a second offense could be a low-grade felony resulting in probation.
Whisman’s amendment would retain those sentencing standards for hemp, but add a third layer of penalties so law enforcement officers could raise the stakes for hemp industry participants trafficking higher-level THC products. Depending on the quantity of hemp testing higher than 1% THC, the proposed revision of state law could lead to sentences as long as 154 months.
The new THC metric should be deployed, Whisman said, despite presence of profoundly higher THC levels in marijuana demanded by recreational consumers in Colorado and Missouri.
Greenlight Marijuana Dispensary, which is 750 feet from the Kansas border in Kansas City, Missouri, offered cannabis ranging from 16% to 30% THC. There were dozens of choices, but middle-of-the-road options included Baja Fog registering at 23.6% THC with Space Cowboy Budlets at 24.8%, Platinum Jelly Cake at 25% and Gary Payton Budlets at 26%.
At least 16 states have authorized medical marijuana programs and 24 states legalized recreational consumption of cannabis, but Kansas has done neither.
Rogue hemp farmers?
The plan to crack down on potential hemp farm renegades interested Havana Sen. Virgil Peck, the Republican chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. He welcomed Whisman’s unconventional presentation on the law enforcement request to the six House and Senate negotiators working last week on compromise agriculture legislation.
“The reason I’m bringing this forward is to make certain hemp is hemp and hemp growers do not get out of their lane,” Peck said. “It’s the real reason, just to cut to the chase, why I am presenting this.”
The proposal appeared to catch several negotiators off guard, and the House agriculture committee chairman, Agra GOP Rep. Ken Rahjes, said he wouldn’t agree to add the proposal to a bill.
