Missouri medical marijuana czar: State 'working hard' to get dispensaries, cultivators operating
More than two years after a wide margin of voters approved a medical marijuana amendment to the Missouri Constitution, the state's medical marijuana system is still a work in progress, prompting impatience and criticism among observers and patients in the grass-roots cannabis community, along with the medical marijuana industry.
In southern Missouri, just a handful of dispensaries are open, selling products priced at a premium, when possible, because the Missouri-grown supply of cannabis flower is small.
Products like edibles remain scarce, partly because it takes a large amount of cannabis biomass to manufacture items like THC-infused gummies, and there's not much legal plant matter on the market just yet. Only about one-fifth of Missouri's network of lawful cultivation sites is actively growing cannabis plants.
Of the 372 Missouri-based medical marijuana businesses that received the necessary licenses to go forward in late 2019 and early 2020, just 43 were approved to operate by Dec. 31 of last year, according to official statistics from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which administers the state medical marijuana system.
Read more: https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/missouri/2021/01/09/missouri-medical-marijuana-czar-state-working-cannabis-dispensaries-cultivators-operating/6586354002/
(Springfield News-Leader)