Not every state can enjoy the freedom that Colorado residents get to experience. Authorities say Colorado cannabis has worked its way into every corner of conservative Kansas, according to the state's Attorney General Derek Schmidt. Law enforcement has had enough. Local authorities claim that they can roughly identify Colorado's cannabis simply by its quality.
Schmidt surveyed over 320 responding law enforcement agencies in the area and 70 prosecutors' offices. According to the report, over the last two years, Kansas has seen at least 57 cases of drug busts involving Colorado edibles. The Kansas Highway Patrol reported 102 seizures and 1,259 pounds of marijuana involving Colorado cannabis within the first six months of 2016. Five of those seizures involved large amounts of marijuana worth over $10,000. Law enforcement officers can only assume the real number will continue to get higher.
Despite the 'alarming' data in the new report, local law enforcement says that Colorado weed is effectively replacing the marijuana that once flowed in illegally from Mexican cartels. Lietenant Bill Cox is a member of the Salina Police Department Drug Task Force. “From last year in 2015 we seized approximately 28.5 pounds of marijuana throughout the year and only about 300 of those grams were of the marijuana we used to see come up from Mexico,” Cox told KSNT.
Colorado's plan to keep recreational marijuana from crossing over border lines into Kansas appears to be a failure.
“Prior to the influx of Colorado marijuana, virtually all of the marijuana seized in our jurisdiction was compressed marijuana referred to by locals as “reggie” with Mexican origins, The Garden City Police wrote in the report. “This type of marijuana is rarely seen any longer in our jurisdiction and virtually all the marijuana seen here are from Colorado either legally from dispensaries or underground black market sources.”
