Oklahoma U.S. Sen. James Lankford blames, in part, Oklahoma’s passage of medical marijuana for a jump in foreign ownership of farmland in the state.
It’s what he indicated as he spoke at the start of a Senate hearing and campaigned for his Security and Oversight of Inmternational Landholdings Act.
“Oklahoma is now number eight in the nation for having land owned by foreign entities in our state since 2018 when we passed that. In fact, the year after we passed a medical marijuana law in our state, the next year, Oklahoma had more land sales to foreign entities than any other state in the nation,” said the Senator during hearings by the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
His efforts are aimed at China and the nation’s dependence on the foreign country from farmland purchases to pharmaceuticals to critical minerals.
“In 2018, my state passed a medical marijuana law,” explained the Republican Senator.
“Now it was the most liberal medical marijuana bill in the nation at the time, and what we saw was a rush to be able to buy up farm land in our state. And it was a shift that surprised a lot of people in the state based on how quickly it happened and based on who actually did it.”
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