Riley County Police Department raided CBD American Shaman on Jan. 30 and arrested franchisee owner Donald Ince on probable cause offenses of three counts of distribution of marijuana and one count of failure to appear.
Ince said his store was forced to close for two weeks after RCPD seized his inventory and froze his bank accounts.
“I wasn’t labeling the flower, and so when people were in other counties, they were getting arrested for marijuana [possession],” Ince said. “I got subpoenaed for a case in McPherson, and I forgot about it and didn’t go, so I got a warrant for that, and when they served that warrant, they did a search warrant … [and] we’re still going to court over it. It’s probably going to take six months to a year to straighten it all out.”
RCPD has encountered many cases in recent months where individuals were cited for possession of marijuana after purchasing what they believed were legal CBD products from local businesses.
An anonymous Kansas State student who regularly consumes both legal and illegal cannabis substances said it was “scary” that consumers could be arrested for what they thought was a legal purchase.
“I would have been like those other people who got stopped and had no idea that I had an illegal product,” the student said. “It’s one thing to actually know that you have a product on you that’s illegal in your state, but it’s another thing to think that you purchased legally.”
Kansas House Bill No. 2367 requires retailers to label all packaged cannabis products with cannabinoid — a group of compounds found in cannabis plants — chemical concentrations.
Ince said he sends all products to the Pinnacle Analytics lab in Medford, Oregon, to test cannabinoid concentrations.
“Mostly, I carry the American Shaman or Zen master [products],” Ince said. “That’s the stuff from our company, but if people come looking for something that I don’t have, I tend to try and get that for them.”
K-State graduate and one of TopShelf CBD’s three part-owners, Jeremy Meek, said he had the idea of starting a CBD business since he was a freshman in 1998.
“That’s always just been a dream and a passion,” Meek said. “But, the laws weren’t changed back then. I had to go to school and get a Bachelor’s and Master’s. I worked in social services in the healthcare field until the law started changing.”
TopShelfCBD part-owner Ray Hannings said each store product is labeled with a QR code to keep in compliance with Kansas law.
“Every product, including a flyer, has a COA badge on it,” Hannings said. “It is a QR code that anybody — you, me, our moms, law enforcement — can scan. It goes to a website that actually holds the legal documentation for that product.”
Hannings said the store also requires customers to leave with a receipt as an extra layer of documentation.
“You’re not going to leave my store with me worried about you being pulled over. I’m giving you a receipt … it is what we do,” Hannings said. “You are going to leave here with proper documentation because we want this industry to look good, reliable and clean.”
