Bloomer Botanicals in Winfield prides itself on having the largest CBD selection in Cowley County.
Sharon Gordon, 75, runs the shop along with a dedicated team of two other women who work part-time. She opened the shop after her own experience using cannabis for medical reasons.
“I really should be retired,” she said. “But, you know, it just seemed like cannabis, or hemp cannabinoids, were doing so much for me physically that I wanted to be able to offer that to other people locally.”
Gordon’s products have some things in common with cannabis you could buy at a dispensary in Missouri or Colorado. For starters, there’s that distinct smell. Both products also might help with appetite, sleep or pain.
The key difference that makes her products legal in Kansas is very little-to-no tetrahydrocannabinol – or THC – the main psychoactive compound in cannabis.
Some items still have some form of a high, while many others do not, especially cannabidiol (CBD).
But when Congress voted to end the government shutdown this fall, it passed a measure that will make most of the consumable, hemp-derived products at Bloomer Botanicals illegal again.
Gordon and other CBD shop owners in Kansas tell KMUW it could kill their whole industry.
“Oh yeah, I’d have to close,” Gordon said. “Because just CBD alone – I don’t have enough customers just looking for CBD alone.”
Gordon opened her shop in 2018 shortly after Congress legalized many consumable products derived from hemp across the U.S.
But years before that, she used cannabis to treat symptoms of bladder cancer and kidney disease. Gordon credits the drug and the hemp-derived alternatives she takes now for keeping her off dialysis.
“At the time, my urologist doctor had told me that I would probably be in kidney failure within two years,” she said.
That experience informs her approach at Bloomer Botanicals. Gordon and her employees are certified through a program on understanding the products and finding the best one for each customer’s unique situation.
She says she doesn’t make much off the business but she “felt like these products need to be accessible.”
Kansas a holdover on legal cannabis
Gordon says that’s especially true in Kansas, one of the last holdover states without legal medical or recreational cannabis. That’s despite the fact that recent studies repeatedly show a majority of Kansans support legalizing it.
So why is Kansas still holding out? Conservative leaders in Topeka have refused to take up the issue, particularly in the Senate.
In 2022, the Kansas House of Representatives passed a bill that would have established a narrow medical cannabis program. The Senate never took it up.
Those who oppose efforts to legalize cannabis say they don’t want to get ahead of the federal government. Some also say more research needs to be done on the potential risks of cannabis.
Kelly Rippel is a longtime hemp and cannabis advocate with Kansans for Hemp. He says the real danger comes from buying on the black market.
“When there is no legal way for people to access products that we know are safe and tested and all of that, then it just increases risk,” he said.
Kansas also lacks statewide ballot measures, which let people vote directly on a proposed law.
Many states with some form of legal cannabis, like Missouri and Oklahoma, went that route to skirt their more-conservative state lawmakers.
Rippel does have a suggestion for a blanket fix at the state or federal level.
“I would like to see cannabis itself de-scheduled,” he said. “Because that would allow for, I would say, the proper level of regulation.”
But with no signs that Kansas or the federal government will do so any time soon, access to hemp-derived alternatives is about to go away again – in a state that was famously the last to legalize alcohol again after the end of Prohibition.
