If the law is incomprehensible, how can you possibly follow it? And how can a moral society punish you for not doing so?
Yet thats the cruel vise putting a frightening squeeze on retailers Annie Martin and her fiancé Sean Lefler who, along with an employee, face possible prison time and felony records for allegedly violating hemp-selling laws that few can comprehend.
In fact, the laws surrounding hemp are so tangled that the two owners of Free State Collective CBD store in Lawrence couldnt get much guidance from the various state agencies they called ahead of time as part of their due diligence.
In short, not even the state knows the state of the law. But it wants to punish these three with felony convictions? Scandalous.
Consider, for contrast, a prosecutors decision not to press charges after seizure of CBD oil with THC from a store in South Dakota. In order to prosecute somebody for the distribution of THC, which is a schedule 1 (drug), we would have to prove that they did so knowingly, the prosecutor explained earlier this month. And when theyre relying on manufacturer representations, which turn out to be wrong, it would be kind of hard to prove that they did so knowingly.
The fluidity and murkiness of laws surrounding the blossoming hemp and marijuana industries in the region didnt stop the Kansas Bureau of investigation. Acting on a tip, the KBI raided the store twice, confiscating inventory, cash and even iPads in the process of bringing felony charges for what may amount to an honest mistake.
If its a mistake at all. It depends on their products level of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, which has been tested but not definitively.
Regardless of what the tests ultimately show in court, the states sledgehammer approach is frightening and wholly out of proportion to the alleged offense. The KBI didnt somehow come upon the long-sought hideout of El Chapo the drug kingpin. Rather, the agency encountered a pair of entrepreneurs in an easy-to-find storefront who are openly trying to find their way in the uncharted frontier of hemp laws. Not far away, it must be said, from a state-approved field of the stuff.
Some laws are unconstitutionally unclear, but the state of hemp/marijuana laws in the nation is inhumanely vague. Not to mention conflicting, erratic and out-of-whack. As a Star story on the Free State case noted, these three couldve lit up a THC-laced marijuana cigarette on the courthouse steps and walked away with but a $1 fine. Instead, Martin and Lefler face possible felony convictions and up to 17 years in prison for putting out a shingle and telling society where to find them and their wares, unaware of any wrongdoing.
What jury of their peers would convict them? And what is the point of potentially lopping off their heads when so many associated laws are being relaxed? Do the KBI and Douglas County District Attorney think this would be such a big victory in the war on drugs? Hemp flower? Really?
And is Annie Martin really worthy of the SWAT team treatment? A former elementary school teacher, she had to quit to care for her son after a serious boating accident in 2015, and found medicinal benefits to Cannabidiol, CBD, a marijuana extract.
Although CBDs benefits are still being researched, growing numbers of users swear by it for such things as pain, inflammation and even anxiety and insomnia, and there is solid scientific evidence of its alleviation of epileptic seizures in children. THC-free CBD is now legal in Kansas, as medicinal marijuana will soon be in Missouri.
The trend here and elsewhere is decidedly toward the relaxing of marijuana and hemp laws. And yet the state of Kansas is threatening serious prison time for perhaps inadvertently selling hemp flower?
Its at least encouraging that Douglas County officials Tuesday said the Free State Collective CBD employee is being considered for diversion, a form of pretrial probation that can lead to charges being dismissed.
But the question remains, should the charges have ever been brought?
