If Missouri voters approve a recreational marijuana ballot measure in November, dispensaries are anticipating a flood of Kansas customers, eager to purchase legal joints, gummies and other cannabis products.

Kansas City will be the epicenter of that border hopping. But the moment Kansas residents take their pot back home, they’ll be breaking the law.

The metro area, home to more than 2.3 million people, straddles a state poised to approve recreational marijuana during the Nov. 8 election and another where it remains totally banned. Kansas is one of only 13 remaining states with neither legal medical nor recreational cannabis.

Missouri’s current medical marijuana program is restricted to residents of the state, but a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution would open sales to adults over 21 regardless of where they live. Kansas residents living along the Missouri border would be able to cross state lines to make a legal purchase without traveling far from home.

Western Kansas has been grappling with how to approach legally purchased recreational marijuana since Colorado began allowing sales in 2014. But even though Colorado products have been moving across Kansas highways for years, the sparsely-populated region is a far cry from the dense, urban Kansas City metro area where tens of thousands of people cross state lines every day for work and play. [Read more @ The Kansas City Star]