Constitutional conservatives should embrace cannabis freedom, not try to demonize it
I have been advocating for cannabis liberty in Topeka for 10 years and have testified in front of many committees in the Kansas Legislature on over 50 bills regarding cannabis.
This would include any bill hearing that touches the status, enforcement and penalties of cannabis prohibition from the Ways and Means committee, Agriculture committees (of course), Judiciary and Corrections and Juvenile Justice, Public Health and Welfare and even Insurance.
I have come to the conclusion that the true menace when it comes to cannabis, (aka marijuana, hemp), are those who forget, deny or subvert our agreed-upon rules of historic constitutionality.
This constitutionality was and is built on the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, which says that each of us have natural rights, endowed by our Creator, to be defended by the people’s elected representatives for all generations.
When the government (especially the federal government), prohibits a plant that has a very robust protein profile for nutrition, industrial uses that were drowned out by synthetics, and therapeutic health maintenance properties including antiinflammation, we have gone outside those boundaries and there is a need to redress this grievance.
Much of the blame is squarely on the federal government and those in agreement with people like KBI Director Tony Mattivi, who believe that legislators are protecting the people by prohibiting cannabis.
This reminds me of a quote from former president Ronald Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Understanding that I am talking about the natural plant, cannabis.
I am for a state Controlled Substance Act and I support a hard-on-crime approach when it comes to the possession, manufacture or distribution of synthetic substances like fentanyl, methamphetamine and yes, synthetic cannabinoids like those currently being sold in cannabis dispensaries throughout the state of Kansas.
In fact, I would support first-time time minimum mandatory 30-day sentences for possession of a controlled substance that is synthetic (man-made).
Another consequence of this harmful prohibition of the natural plant is a forprofit monopoly for pharmaceutical companies, which charge $32,000 a year to treat a child suffering from certain seizures with a synthetic cannabinoid drug, that could be grown and used for free.
Our society is bombarded with marketing that screams, feed your children sugar cereals, Adderall (amphetamines), and ultra-processed foods.
Politics is, though, as politics does. And the current attempt to label cannabis as a menace does not hold water when compared to non-scheduled drugs like sugar, caffeine, alcohol or tobacco.
Cannabis liberty is not a catalyst of impending doom that is being propagated by armed executive agency prohibitionists that use deception and fearmongering as their tools to keep this liberty issue locked down.
The 10th Amendment of our Constitutional Republic’s agreed upon rules states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the People.”
The only gateway cannabis prohibition provides is one into a hypocritical criminal justice or behavioral-health system which is geared toward disparate enforcement.
There is an image of a person on our Kansas state flag who is plowing a field and getting ready to plant a seed.
The people of Kansas do not need more diagnoses, restrictions, regulations, fees, fines, or laws.
We, the People of Kansas, need for our elected officials to do what they swore or affirmed to do and that is to defend the Constitution and our natural rights, which includes constitutional cannabis.