Sen. Tom Holland's interaction with nauseated cancer patients, children with chronic seizures and military veterans stricken with post-traumatic stress disorder inspired drafting of a bill to legalize use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Holland, a Democrat from Baldwin City, said he planned to introduce, perhaps this week, a bill outlining a state regulatory framework to guide patients, physicians, farmers, retailers and law enforcement through a transition previously embraced by 33 states, including Missouri, Oklahoma and Colorado. His bill wouldn't legalize marijuana for recreational consumption in Kansas.

"People very much want access to these medical alternatives to help them with their ailments," he said during the Capitol Insider podcast of The Topeka Capital-Journal. "They would like to have the opportunity to explore treatments with marijuana to address some of the symptoms of diseases they have."

Holland's bill could be among several introduced during the 2019 legislative session tied to cannabis use when recommended by a medical provider. Gov. Laura Kelly endorsed medicinal marijuana reform during her campaign.

In Kansas, House and Senate committees have bottled up efforts to advance medicinal marijuana legislation.

In 2018, the Kansas House rejected 54-69 an amendment introduced on the House floor to legalize medical marijuana under terms of the Kansas Safe Access Act.

Rep. Cindy Holscher, a Democrat from Olathe, offered the amendment along with a personal appeal. She said her daughter was prescribed medication with serious side effects for rheumatoid arthritis. Parents searching for alternative treatments for their children should be able to explore medical marijuana without leaving the state, she said.

"The Kansas Safe Access Act is a well laid out plan to bring medicinal cannabis to Kansas," Holscher said. "The bill is very people centered and very Kansas centered in that it is a nonprofit model protective of the environment, our farmers and all those who would be involved in the process."

She said the Legislature should protect interests of Kansans by avoiding any for-profit model that could lead to monopolized dispensaries in Kansas. The state law could cover legal protections for patients and medical providers, patient identification cards, education centers, cultivation and supply guidelines, workforce education, public safety, revenue policies, packaging regulations, testing and lab requirements and waste disposal.

Holland's bill would place the Kansas Department of Health and Environment at the forefront of state regulation. Patients would register with KDHE and present a state ID card when buying doctor-prescribed marijuana. The Kansas Board of Pharmacy would permit dispensaries.

His proposal would require production and distribution operations to be owned by Kansans. Individuals would be prohibited from owning both a marijuana growing operation and a retail dispensary, he said.

"This is a controlled, conservative approach," Holland said. "Marijuana is obviously a very highly controlled substance. We've got to make sure we have the processes in place to treat it as such."

Holscher said a major obstacle to passage of a law securing marijuana for people with medical needs was decades of sweeping propaganda about the plant. The path marked by two-thirds of the states offers Kansas options for structuring the law, Holland said.

"There's going to be people that are going to be very suspicious of what's going on," Holland said. "We're in good company moving forward on this."

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