James Lankford of the U.S. Senate (R-OK), stated at a Friday event that his own state’s voters didn’t know what they did when they legalized marijuana as a medical treatment in 2018.
Lankford, citing a report by the Texoma High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program (HIDTA), which includes north Texas and Oklahoma as well, said that the state was overrun with growers and marijuana dispensaries, and had “seen an increase in crime and human trafficking [and] Illegal immigration coming into our State” Since the law has taken effect.
“I think many Oklahomans didn’t realize, at the time that this vote was actually taken, what those consequences would be.”
The Senator’s remarks are similar to the criticisms of medical marijuana that Republican politicians have made in Oklahoma for many years. Governor. Kevin Stitt(R) suggested the same thing, saying that voters misunderstood their cannabis initiative.
Stitt stated at that time that he had instructed law enforcement officials to “punish the black market” and that “drug cartels, organized crime, foreign bad actors do not belong in Oklahoma”.
But in comments on Friday, Lankford—a longtime critic of legalization—painted a dire picture of what’s happening in the state.
He said that the findings of this new HIDTA study were “sharp”. The number of Chinese organized criminals and Chinese criminals who have moved to Oklahoma has skyrocketed in the last six year.
This has led to “execution style murders” in rural parts of the state, which are “directly connected to marijuana crops and what’s happening on the ground”.
A federal politician said: “We have to make hard decisions about what we are going to do to protect our children in the days ahead.” “We have hard decisions to be able to make on what we’re going to do to be able to protect our kids in the days ahead… This is a very serious issue that we need to be able to take on and to be able to address.”
To be very clear, he was against medical marijuana’s legalization from the start. We’re seeing now the result of law enforcement backing down as our state rushes to this issue.
Oklahoma has 12 times as many state-licensed marijuana growers as Colorado, Lankford said, and five times the number of licensed dispensaries—despite Colorado being home to an additional 2 million people.
Oklahoma was ranked 43rd nationally in terms of marijuana consumption by minors in 1990, but now it ranks third.
Lankford nonetheless said that the HIDTA new report is useful for legislators.
He said, “This helps us get an idea of our current situation.” “We know where we stood six years ago and we also know where we stand now. “It’s useful to be able pick up on national trends.”
To combat what he described as a scourge of foreign nationals setting up criminal marijuana businesses, he pointed to legislation he introduced in 2023—the Security and Oversight of International Landholdings (SOIL) Act—meant to tighten laws around the acquisition of agricultural land by foreign businesses.
Another congressional bill that Lankford sponsored earlier this year would continue to block marijuana businesses from taking federal tax deductions under Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code 280E—even if cannabis is ultimately rescheduled.
Lankford has also been sharply critical of the federal rescheduling push itself, leading a public comment letter with GOP colleagues last year opposing the reform and alleging the government’s recommendation was based on politics rather than science.
The senator, as he has done in the past, also criticised Oklahoma’s program for medical marijuana on Friday.
He said that every state had some sort of limit on medical marijuana. “In Oklahoma, you can say, ‘My left toe hurts every third Thursday,’ and get a permit on that.”
Lankford’s comments on medical marijuana have been similar for many years.
“They can say, ‘I have a headache.’ They can say, ‘My left toe hurts every other Thursday,'” he said in 2018. “They could go to any medical professional, whether it’s a chiropractor or a doctor.
He claimed that marijuana was not prescribed for chronic pain, but only to get high or escape the pain.
Lankford mocked the law that voters approved in 2022 with the exact same words.
“You could say, ‘My left toe hurts every other Thursday,'” he said, “and they would say, ‘Great, that’s a medical condition.'”
Oklahoma lawmakers passed legislation last month to protect the gun rights of medical marijuana patients registered with their state, even though federal law prohibits cannabis users, regardless of whether they are registered as such, from possessing firearms.
The bill, if passed, would ensure that medical marijuana patients would not disqualify them from obtaining a state issued handgun licence.
In January, a separate law was introduced that would prohibit women from using medical marijuana while pregnant.
Medical marijuana representatives weighed in late last year on proposed changes by lawmakers to the program.
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Philip Steffan provided the photo.