Kansas Plan to Fund Medicaid With Pot Taxes Faces Headwinds

The Kansas governor’s plan to expand Medicaid and legalize medical marijuana in a single legislative package will be a long shot in the 2021 legislative session, key lawmakers say.

Gov. Laura Kelly (D) says bringing the two proposals together makes sense because tax revenue from medical marijuana can fund the state’s cost of expanding the health program, which will allow 165,000 more low-income Kansans to have insurance.

Increasing that coverage without straining the state’s budget could be crucial to Kansas’s recovery from the pandemic. But leaders of the GOP-dominated Legislature say yoking the two initiatives together is no way to ...