Chiefs or weed? Kansas is losing out on marijuana market. It’s time to get in the game | Opinion
You know what we need right now? A border war for pot.
Kansas and Missouri love to compete. Right now, the two states are vying for the chance to host the Chiefs and the Royals in the near future — a competition in which the “winner” will probably put taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in construction costs for a new or renovated stadium.
Seems like a bad idea to me.
But that doesn’t mean the border war is always a bad idea. Competition sometimes has benefits — both to a state’s tax coffers and the people who live there.
And right now, it would be great if Kansas finally got in the game to compete with Missouri for the marijuana market.
I mention this because of news (first reported by the Missouri Independent) that the Show-Me State’s cannabis market has already grown to $1.4 billion, just two years after the state’s voters decided to fully legalize the drug.
That’s a lot of pot. A cornucopia of cannabis. A whopping amount of weed.
Growth in pot profits
“Missouri is doing amazing things,” Laurie Parfitt, CEO at LKP Impact Consulting, said at an industry conference last week in St. Louis, “and we expect tremendous growth in this market going forward.”
Now: I have little doubt that Missouri has enough stoners, occasional users and people with bad knees to keep the state’s dispensaries profitable.
Let’s be honest, though. A decent chunk of the Show-Me State’s business is coming over the border from Kansas, where marijuana sales of any sort — for recreational or medicinal reasons — remain illegal thanks to the stubbornness of the GOP-controlled Kansas Legislature.
The spirit of Carrie Nation, the ax-wielding “Hatchet Granny” who led the anti-alcohol temperance movement in the early 20th century, remains alive and well in her home state.
Which means that Kansas is providing a subsidy of sorts to the Missouri marijuana industry — and to state and local governments in Missouri, which are raking in all kinds of taxes that Kansas officials have chosen to forgo.
Which seems like another bad idea.
Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma
It’s not just Missouri, though. Nebraska voters last week passed measures legalizing and regulating medical marijuana in that state. Colorado and Oklahoma started their own weed programs years ago.
Legally, then, Kansas appears to be an oasis of sobriety.
We all know the reality is different. The folks who want to get their hands on weed can and do. All it takes is a little drive, or a friend who is making a trip across the border.
That’s not to entirely dismiss the concerns of anti-pot forces in the Kansas Legislature. “It seems to me that I’ve known some young people who’ve been addicted to marijuana, and it’s virtually almost ruined their lives,” state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, said at a committee hearing last month.
Maybe. But the logic would be more convincing if Kansans — especially those in Thompson’s district, just a few minutes’ drive from the Missouri border — didn’t already have wildly easy access to the drug.
They do. They purchase marijuana on one side of the border. They use it on the other. And they leave their money in Missouri. (One industry report in May found that dispensaries in Kansas City report sales 73% higher than those in St. Louis, which sits on the border with Illinois — and which also has legalized pot. Draw your own conclusions.)
If you think about it, a border war for pot makes way more sense than fighting over sports teams.
The up-front costs are cheaper for one thing. (Stadiums are considerably more expensive than a strip mall storefront.) And the teams could threaten to pick up and leave in another 15 or 20 years, taking all their promised financial benefits with them. The Chiefs used to be the Dallas Texans, remember? Kansas City’s baseball team used to be the Athletics. Stuff happens.
The market for marijuana will probably last as long as there are people around here to use it, though.
For now, though, Kansas is sitting out this border war battle. Missouri is winning by default, and reaping 100% of the benefits. A little competition would be nice.
This story was originally published November 12, 2024 at 5:07 AM with the headline "Chiefs or weed? Kansas is losing out on marijuana market. It’s time to get in the game | Opinion."