A Prairie Village councilmember recently started a nonprofit calling for statewide legalization of recreational cannabis.
In March, Councilmember Inga Selders founded the Cannabis Justice Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to cannabis reform in Kansas.
Selders said during a Tuesday morning media event that the coalition’s approach is to educate the public about where their state legislators — whose seats are all up for grabs in the 2024 election cycle — stand on cannabis.
The Cannabis Justice Coalition is on a mission to ensure the legalization of recreational marijuana is a top issue in the 2024 election season, Selders said.
“This year, we are putting the pressure on everybody who is up for reelection right now,” Selders said. “They have been avoiding the topic and they’ve been able to, at this point, have it where it hasn’t been front and central.”
Selders started working on the issue in Prairie Village
- Three years ago, councilmembers Ian Graves and Selders introduced a proposal to decriminalize marijuana to the Prairie Village City Council.
- Selders and Graves emphasized the proximity to Missouri, which at the time had already legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized cannabis (recreational use is now legal in Missouri).
- Those efforts came to a halt in July 2021, following staff investigation into decriminalizing marijuana and the police chief warning against such an ordinance.
- Still, the Prairie Village City Council included “the legalization of cannabis and its derivatives” in its 2024 legislative platform.
- At Tuesday’s event, Selders said she started the coalition — of which Graves is a board member — because she felt it was time to “step up and move the needle” on the state legislature’s lack of action on the issue.
Cannabis Justice Coalition is focused on four key points
The four key items that the Cannabis Justice Coalition is focused on are as follows, as Selders mentioned on Tuesday:
- Arming Kansans with information about where legislative candidates stand on the legalization of cannabis
- Educating Kansans on the economic and social benefits of legalization
- Working with legislative candidates who are interested in legalization and/or open to discussions
- Supporting pro-cannabis state legislative candidates no matter their political affiliation
In addition to Graves, the Cannabis Justice Coalition’s board is made up of the following:
- Weldon Angelos, a music producer who was sentenced to a 55-year prison term in 2004 for possession of $1,000 worth of cannabis
- Leslie Byram, an estate planning and probate attorney who has heard from clients with special needs and medical issues about the benefits of cannabis
- Barry Grissom, the former U.S. attorney for the district of Kansas as nominated by President Barack Obama, who is a criminal justice reform advocate
The coalition plans to use economy, ag industry as appeals
Selders said the coalition is committed to the legalization of recreational marijuana rather than medical because the former addresses the criminal justice reform issue.
Grissom said the coalition wants to use neighboring states’ outcomes from legalization of marijuana to impress upon legislators the economic benefits.
Graves said the coalition has toyed with combining the issues of cannabis and hemp, which come from the same plant, given the state’s big agriculture industry.
As an example, Grissom sees potential for Kansas State University, which has a reputation as a “great agriculture school” to become “the Harvard” of hemp and cannabis research, he said.
“This is good public policy, this is good tax policy, it’s good law enforcement policy, it’s good criminal justice reform policy,” Grissom said. “This is something that’s a win-win-win scenario.”
Keep reading: Legalizing medical marijuana is so popular in Kansas, so why hasn’t it happened yet?
