Gov. Kelly needs to get medical marijuana right in Kansas. Don’t make Ohio’s mistake

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly recently announced her newest strategy to pass Medicaid expansion: legalizing medical marijuana. Since Republicans have objected to the cost of expansion, she plans to offset those costs with medicinal marijuana tax revenues. 

Expansion and legalization are good ideas, and polls show they are both popular. But if Kelly wants medical marijuana to benefit Kansans, she needs to start thinking much differently about what a Kansas program should look like. In particular, she should run — far, far away — from the “Ohio model” currently being touted in Topeka. 

Ohio’s medical marijuana program is a disaster, benefiting only the small sliver of businesses able to navigate the onerous and costly licensing process. According to a recent Ohio State University study, more than 60% of potential users were dissatisfied with the state’s medical marijuana program, finding it difficult to access and costly. Unsurprisingly, few Ohioans are using it, with fewer than 1% of those registered with the state’s medical marijuana program as patients. They prefer driving over the border to Michigan, where marijuana is legal for recreational use, or obtaining it on the black market. As a result, the state program provides little tax revenue and limited benefits for the people. This is the program Kansas wants to emulate? 

Ohio is far from the only state with a sclerotic marijuana program that fails to address the needs of patients and taxpayers. One reason for this sad state of affairs is that medical marijuana faces a structural problem. Regulations too often reflect the interests of two seemingly opposed groups: licensed marijuana businesses and marijuana prohibitionists. That may appear odd at first, but both groups have an interest in pushing public agencies to restrict who can sell cannabis. Businesses want to limit competition, and prohibitionists want to limit access. Programs that reflect these interests fail to live up to their potential. 

States need to stop letting their rules be set by those who oppose legalized marijuana and those looking to build a marijuana monopoly. Missouri residents, forced to wait two years for the first dispensaries to open and still served by only about 40 throughout the state, understand that problem all too well. 

So instead of looking to Ohio or Missouri, Gov. Kelly should cast her gaze south. Oklahoma hosts one of the country’s most successful medical marijuana programs. Voters approved medical marijuana in 2018 — the same year as Missouri — and the state now leads the country in patient enrollment rates. Oklahoma has licensed more than 2,000 dispensaries, 6,500 cultivators and 1,200 processors. 

As a result, Oklahoma’s medical marijuana program generates significant tax revenue — approximately $120 million in 2020. That’s double the amount from the state lottery and far greater than the roughly $15 million in marijuana taxes brought in by Ohio, a state with triple Oklahoma’s population. (And no, robust patient enrollment has not resulted in the collapse of productive society.) 

With a similar agricultural profile to Kansas and large numbers of rural cultivators, Oklahoma also demonstrates the folly of proposed rules that would restrict Kansans to processed marijuana products. Instead, the state should be seeking ways to expand the involvement of Kansas’ farmers and rural communities, including exploring legal avenues to directly connect cultivators and patients.

The key to Oklahoma’s success has been setting clear and manageable rules for stakeholders (patients, providers and businesses), making licensing fees affordable and allowing competition to build a robust market. In other words, the type of regulatory system that leads to efficient outcomes for taxpayers, patients and producers. Oklahoma’s system is not perfect, and time will tell whether the state’s implementation of a seed-to-sale tracking system will be a success. But the paradigm of a broadly functioning, accessible system free of excessive barriers to entry is one Kansas would be wise to emulate. 

So yes, it’s time for Kansas to legalize medical marijuana. But let’s do it right. 

Benjamin Schwab is an associate professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University. The views and opinions here are solely the responsibility of the author and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of the university.