(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to "Inspire."

Coming up, we continue our "Inspire" three-part mini series, "Cannabis in Kansas," with a discussion on the economic side of cannabis.

It's the economy of cannabis coming up next on "Inspire," stay right there.

(gentle chime) - [Announcer] "Inspire" is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to "Inspire."

I'm Betty Lou Pardue, surrounded by my lovely "Inspire" cohost, Amy Kelly, and Danielle Norwood.

- Thanks, Betty Lou.

It's great to be here to continue our three part mini series, "Cannabis in Kansas," such an important discussion with so much to cover.

- And we've covered a lot so far, show one focused on the history and stigma, and in show two, We discussed the medicinal side of cannabis, and now, here we are on show three where we're going to deep dive into the economics of cannabis.

Joining us via Zoom is Leigh Carr, General Manager for Hippos Marijuana Dispensary, and we're happy to be joined again by Kelly Rippel, co-founder of Kansans for Hemp who has been a familiar face on all of our episodes of our "Cannabis in Kansas" mini series.

Leigh and Kelly, thank you so much for joining us on "Inspire."

- Thank you again for having us.

- So I'm just gonna start off with the hot potato question already, okay?

Why is cannabis so slow to be legalized in the state of Kansas?

And I'll let you start with us, Kelly, and then Leigh, I'll come to you.

- I can start off by saying that Kansas was one of the first states in the nation to eradicate industrial hemp.

- Okay.

- And so, therefore, there was a stigma about people who use drugs and people who use specifically alcohol from the prohibition period, and that bled over into the anti-immigration sentiment that then demonized people for utilizing substances, including cannabis.

- Mkay.

- And it is a very heavily entrenched societal paradigm that we have to overcome, and being part of the group that has reintroduced legislation in the past 10 years in the Kansas legislature, it has been an uphill battle, and when you have a lot of heavily entrenched agencies and parties going against the evidence that you're presenting, you do run into obstacles.

- Mkay, Leigh, what's your thoughts on that?

- My opinion is that Kansas has not passed legislation because they do not allow their constituents the right to vote on a ballot as other states have that have passed legislation.

So here in Missouri where I am right now, they are collecting signatures for the recreational ballot.

They have to collect, I believe, 250,000 signatures, to get something on the ballot to allow their constituents to vote for something to pass in Missouri.

So in Kansas, we as constituents are not allowed that, we do not get to go and collect signatures to get something on ballot, everything has to happen through the House in Topeka, and through the Senate.

So when we have a bill in Kansas, you have to have legislative support to even get the bill heard or seen.

- And it does require a two thirds majority vote from the legislature to put an item on the ballot.

- Hmm.

- Mm-hmm.

- So what is the downside of all this?

I understand that there's stigma, and I... That makes sense to me, but if you...

If the facts are presented, this isn't a bad thing, this is a very good thing, economically, can be a very beneficial thing for Kansas.

And so, how do you combat those feelings with facts and figures?

- I can start with that, so just in Missouri, and last month, they did $25 million in sales.

They are set to break $200 million in sales this year for the entire state.

We also have a 6% tax on it that goes back to the state as well, so there's lots of money in it for the state to benefit from it.

- Having attended some of the committee meetings and hearings in past sessions, a lot of the arguments that we're hearing are not backed by evidence, they're unfortunately opinions and bias that are saying Kansas is going to devolve into mediocrity if we legalize access, even to medicinal cannabis.

And so, there's a lot of opinion pieces that are cited as actual evidence, when really, we need to be looking at the holistic weight of all of the evidence from CDC and from SAMHSA, and all of these reputable entities.

- And that seems to be something that continues to happen here because...

I mean, it's happened with the Corona virus and...

But Kansas used to be so progressive.

What are you hearing from the farmers?

The people who would actually be growing it, raising it?

- So I'll take that to start off with.

I've been involved with the legalization and the program of industrial hemp, I am an appointed advisor on the Industrial Hemp Advisory Board for the Kansas Department of Agriculture, and what I've seen so far is that there is a learning curve to growing, specifically, industrial hemp.

- Mm-hmm.

- And there is also a large supply chain that has to be built in order to accommodate those crops and yields that farmers grow.

Now, we did have some rough years starting out with the weather, it was hard to grow any crops in Kansas in 2019, farmers know that, but we also need to, I think, change a little bit of the way that we're thinking about industrial hemp, and compared to other crops, because farmers can grow soybeans and corn, they don't need a specific license to do that, even though you can make alcohol with corn.

- Right.

- Wow.

- So we need to be treating other... We need to be treating industrial hemp, specifically, like crops.

And cannabis being legalized for medicinal use will allow that to happen even further, and I think the utilization of the plant, we will see a lot more economic development and growth.

- So what are some of the positives and negatives of doing this?

Let me be devil's advocate and say, what if the medicinal marijuana ends up in the hands of the wrong people and people that it's not designed for end up using it and trying to sell it that way, like you would recreational marijuana?

I mean, what are some of the thoughts that you both have on that?

- There is no difference between recreational and medical marijuana, it's all comes from the same plant, it's just how it's distributed.

Having a medical or recreational market brings it in-house through seed to sale tracking as well as you're having lab reports, there's always going to be a black market regardless if there's recreation or medical, so that's really more what you have to worry about other than medical getting diverted to the streets, so... And with that being said, the black market is not tested like it is when it is medical or recreational.

- We need to give our communities a little bit more credit, and when you think about the small farmer, they're really wanting to do what's best for their family and put food on the table, they're not trying to break any rules.

- Mm-hmm.

- One of the things that we... As Leigh alluded to, when you have an unregulated market, the state, law enforcement, no one can compete economically with that.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so, when you allow a regulated program to be put in place, the outliers, the people who aren't following the rules, they are more easily identified.

- Hmm.

- Okay.

- And I would say, you mentioned earlier that hemp is...

It's an industrial crop, it's easy to grow.

I would challenge, it's not quite that easy to grow because you do have to protect it from being germinated from the hemp turning into marijuana.

- Sure.

- But I would think in our fiscally conservative state that we are, they would hear numbers like in Missouri of $200 million and 6% sales tax, and it would be...

They would be thinking, "This is a good thing."

I mean, if we put the structure in place, we put the... And we have that, why would they not want to be a part of that?

Because the other states around us are doing it.

- That's a good question there, I mean, just the company that I'm working for has created over 75 jobs, just one company.

- Wow.

- To think of the jobs that Kansas is missing out on that are being created, the income that they're missing, that they're losing, actually.

There's people leaving Kansas to move to the states that are bordering them, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Colorado are all legal in some way, shape or form, and people are flooding to them to get the medicine that they need, so Kansas is losing people from their state, which is lost income.

They're also losing the tax revenue that all these other states are taking in, Oklahoma has given back, I wanna say, over $300 million to their schools alone to date.

- Right.

- So Kansas schools are struggling left and right for their budgets, and this is something that could go right to the schools to help the schools for the paras that they so much need for the special needs children.

(upbeat music) - Let's get you right back into that, we've gotta take a real quick break, you wanna hear what Leigh has to say, we'll be right back with Leigh and Kelly to continue our discussion on the economy of cannabis, stay right there.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Janice Watkins, the CEO of Topeka Habitat for Humanity.

Today, we're gonna be discussing the importance of cleaning and maintaining your P-trap in your restaurant.

If you notice a smell emitting from your sink or if your bathroom has a bit of an odor, the first thing you're gonna wanna check is your P-Trap.

A P trap serves two purposes, it is to collect solid objects so that they don't enter your drain line, so we often find wedding rings and other objects that might be dropped down the sink in the P-trap.

It is important to keep it clean because it does allow water to collect so that gas emissions don't reenter your home, so it's always supposed to be filled with a small amount of water, but if water can't be trapped in it and it's clogged, it won't do its job efficiently.

(upbeat music) So the first thing you wanna do is obviously, turn off your water, which turnoffs can typically be found on these connectors.

And to turn them off, you're just gonna wanna switch them over, check your water to make sure it's turned off.

The P-trap is this curved fixture that connects your sink to the drain.

And you're gonna wanna have a bucket handy because it is designed to hold water.

(upbeat music) So once we have it off, you can see that this one is relatively clean, if it was emitting a smell or if it had something clogged in it, you would wanna just rinse it out or take a wire brush and clean that out.

Once that is done and your P-trap is clean, all you need to do is go through the steps of reconnecting it, which is quite simple.

(upbeat music) And then turning back on your water.

And then your home should be free of smell and have an efficient working P-trap.

(upbeat music) Thank you for joining us, and we hope you get inspired to address your own from maintenance.

(upbeat music) - And we're back with Kelly and Leigh.

In our previous discussion, we were talking about... Well, actually, we were talking about a lot of things, but I think we left off talking about the impact that the economy, the cannabis economy could have in Kansas and how that impacts our schools, and how do children and the whole youth movement play into this?

Please continue.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So I was mentioning that our schools are suffering with their budgets and they're having to cut back, and that the increased tax revenue from legalizing cannabis as medicine in Kansas could be a huge benefit to our schools, and I know a lot of people are worried about if we do legalize, and when we do legalize, what happens with children?

And how it could possibly affect...

It being in the house.

So here in Missouri, we have strict regulations on childproof packaging, as well as you cannot market a product towards a child, nor can you have a product that looks like a current product on the market for a child, so the edibles cannot be shaped like gummies, they have to be something that the child does not look at and think that it is something for them to use, as well as it has huge stickers across saying marijuana, do not consume, I know children can't read, but everything has to have strict guidelines so that you're not getting... Children are not able to get into the packaging, so the gummies have... Just like your opioids, they have the twist tops turned down so your kids can't get into them, same goes with the edibles here, children are not able to get into your medicine.

- Kelly, do you have anything to add to that?

- It's a great point.

During, I believe, 2020, between July... June and July, Oklahoma made enough revenue to provide the salaries for 794 teachers.

- Wow.

- And I looked, I had a substitute teaching license at that time, and I thought, where would we be at?

- Mm-hmm.

That amount of revenue would cover our entire state's need for teachers.

- Oh, my gosh.

- And kind of going back to what Leigh was discussing, regarding poison control center calls, that's one of the things that we hear, well, if we legalize cannabis, everyone, we're gonna get a lot more calls to our poison centers.

But I think it's important to put it in context, and the fact that no one technically has ever overdosed on cannabis because physically, your body doesn't allow itself to, but according to the national poison statistics research, in 2019, 83% of poison exposures reported were non-fatal.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so, with as many states that are legal with cannabis, you would think that if there was a major issue, we would be hearing about it.

- Mm-hmm.

- Let's talk a little bit more about the properties of cannabis, I mean, we were talking about how...

The many uses of hemp, what are some of the properties of cannabis that we... Pros and cons?

- Well, I can't think of one con myself, but there are many, many, many pros in cannabis.

So cannabis for me, as medicine, has allowed me to function daily without having migraines consistently, they take my migraines farther and further apart, as well as when I have one, it decreases the amount of time that it last as well as how hard it can hit me.

It also allows me to function daily from my spinal injuries that I have, when I was on opioids, I would have a very clouded thoughts and brain fog and was unable to function as a mother for my children, and now that I am on cannabis, I can function daily by micro dosing, so I do not smoke to get high, I smoke for relief, and there's a difference, and that is where the education comes in, that you do not have to get high when consuming cannabis to get relief.

- What are we learning from other states?

Because plenty of other states have legalized medical marijuana, what are we learning from them?

And what things can we know going forward as we get ready to, at some point, make medical marijuana legal here in the state of Kansas?

- Well, in one of our previous segments, Amy had alluded to the fact that because Kansas is one of the last states to legalize, there is a lot of data to learn from.

And that's one of the interesting things about drug policy, and specifically, cannabis policy, because once you put a program in place, everything evolves, it always keeps evolving, and it's never the same after that.

What we have seen in some states is some limitations on regulations, caps, for example, on the number of licenses that can be sold, for example, in Missouri, that creates a vacuum and we then have to deal with outside interest coming in, it hikes up the value of the licenses, there can be corruption, there are some lessons that can be learned with regards to the administration of the program itself.

- Regulation as well?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- But regulations as well.

- Can we talk a little bit about the legalization process of cannabis?

I mean, I know a lot of other states have...

Went the medical route first, that was safe, then they went the recreational route, what do you anticipate for Kansas?

I mean, I'd like to think eventually we'll get there.

- Mm-hmm.

- I don't know when, but eventually, we'll get there, what do you see that looking like?

Kelly?

- That's a great question, and I know a lot of people are wondering the same thing.

it does have a lot to do with the federal law, because of the fact that the states are left to their own devices, as they say.

- Right.

- We have a patchwork of policies all throughout the U.S., but it is in conflict with the schedule 1 Controlled Substances Act.

- Mm-hmm.

- And once that changes, I think Kansas will... My hope is it will go down that path.

- But you think it will have to go that direction first?

You think the feds would have to move on that before Kansas actually takes action?

- That is my prediction.

- Your prediction.

- And my perspective right now, having seen what I have the past 10 years.

It will take a while for us to get to that point, but it is going to happen, and I think it's happening faster at a federal level, and in both other states.

- I would absolutely agree with that.

- 'Cause like you said, we are almost completely surrounded now by legal states, but for medical, but we are about to be three quarters covered by adult use in our bordering states.

- And your thoughts on that, Leigh?

- How did it get legalized in Missouri?

What was the process that Missouri went through?

- So Missouri collected signatures to get it on the ballot in 2018, and it passed, I believe, by over 62% voted for it, the constituents did.

And like I mentioned, they are collecting signatures now to get recreational on the ballot in 2022.

- Mm-hmm.

- So each state's different in the way that they go through legislation, it just depends on how the state has it set up, like we said, in Kansas, we're not allowed to vote, some states, the legislation will just do it, I've seen in a couple of states, so it just literally depends on the state and the processes that they have set up.

- I think it is important to point out that in these other states that have both legalized for medical use and for adult use, there hasn't been a major movement to roll those decisions back.

(upbeat music) - Well, thank you, Kelly, and Leigh, for all the information that you presented to us today, and coming up, your "Inspire" hosts are going to discuss our takeaways from the information presented within our "Cannabis in Kansas" "Inspire" mini series.

We'll be right back.

(upbeat music) - And Kelly, this could have such wonderful implications for rural Kansas, and we have got to keep our small towns and our farmers going, and I love the fact that your Dad had been at K State, will you kind of explain how that... That whole situation.

- So my father was involved with the wheat harvest that went from Texas up to the Dakotas.

And while he was earning a biology degree at Kansas State University, he was a volunteer student for a research program, and they went out to farmers plots in Riley County and sectioned them off, and they researched different methods of eradicating them.

So they used fire, they used pesticides, herbicides, all these different types of methods, and they also surveyed the farmers that were participating in the hemp eradication program, and they found out that farmers really didn't want the control program, and they didn't think hemp was competing with their crops, and they also realized that farm game, birds and wildlife on the farm, may leave if they take away that habitat and food source, and it come to find out that did happen.

- We gotta listen to our farmers, I mean, my gosh, they feed us, and is... - So the buzzword, this entire three part mini series has been stigma.

And one of the things that I shared on my show was that 77 Olympic-size swimming pools of alcohol are consumed by Kansans alone during the holiday season.

What's your thought about that, especially as it relates to hemp?

- So I would say with alcohol, it's much more toxic.

Acutely and long-term effects of alcohol is much greater than any type of method of administration of cannabis, even smoking.

And I would also say that there is a great hypocrisy that our society has about which substances are okay and which ones are not.

And money has a lot to do with that.

- Yes.

- Right.

- Of course.

And established industries and corporations, but we are seeing a shift, and I think we're already seeing that in other states, states that have legalized medical cannabis, they have seen decreases in their alcohol consumption and other related incidents.

- And cannabis is not near as difficult or worrisome as many other things.

- Talk about that.

- We have been conditioned to think that this is something deadly, and that it's very toxic, and it's just not.

- It's a gateway drug, right?

- Yes.

- That's what we've been trained.

- The gateway theory is still used, that was cited in a previous testimony by a law enforcement officer in the state house that this would lead to harder drug use and more drug use.

And when we use a harm reduction perspective, especially from a medical and public health standpoint, it's just not what we've seen in other states.

- This is just incredible.

I am so inspired by this.

- Right.

- And by the things that we're hearing, and yet I'm so frustrated because I think this is a no brainer, I mean, this is...

I mean, we have the tools, we have the ability to put the things in place that we can have medical relief for our Kansans, for our people in our state, that we don't have just because of fear, because of hypocrisy, because of money, because of all these reasons, and what can we do?

What can we do to help this?

- I think, telling your elected official, both local, at the city level, county, and also your state representative and senator, they need to hear that this is important to you, your family, the community, and we know that they've heard it for several years, and that's why we're kind of at this point where the legislature will be picking it up in January, in February, and on down the road, and so, they know that something has to happen, something has to change.

- Mm-hmm.

- So hopefully, that change will come.

- And you've been good enough to be with us for all three parts of this series.

If somebody wants to talk to you, you're with a non-profit group where you... How can we get in touch with you and get some information?

- Yes, the Kansas Cannabis Coalition is on Twitter, they're on Facebook, and definitely a great resource for information and support for this movement.

- And it's not opinion, it's information, it's researched information.

- Yeah, we're all about data.

I've always been about information.

- We could tell.

(panel laughing) - And yeah, the information is what's key, and so, in order to change people's minds, you have to show them evidence and also meet them where they are.

- Mm-hmm.

- Right.

- And you're all doing it for the love.

- That's right.

- That's what I love about that, you're not doing it because economically you're benefiting from this, you're doing this because you have a passion to see this happen in Kansas.

- I have a family who farm, and I would love to see them grow in the future.

And I would also love to see the rural and frontier counties have a little... - Prosper.

- Prosper, have a little bit more economic development, this is a value added crop that can be utilized by farmers.

(upbeat music) - And unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today, and we wanna thank you for joining us on "Inspire's" "Cannabis in Kansas" mini series.

I think we could easily spend an entire season on this subject.

- I certainly couldn't agree with you more, Amy, and so much to cover, so little time, so don't forget, you can watch and share this show and all other episodes of "Inspire" at watch.ktwu.org, and if you are inspired to learn more about our guests and find out what's coming up on future shows, be sure to visit us at our website, www.ktwu.org/inspire.

- Inspiring women, inspiring you, and inspiring wisdom on the economics of cannabis.

Right here on KTWU, we thank you for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Inspire" is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.