UPDATE: All marijuana business licenses have been issued. Some dispensaries have already opened and are selling THC-products, and more are expected to open in the near future.

As long as you have your Missouri medical marijuana card, you are allowed to possess up to four ounces and use your medicine in private. Law enforcement officers have been instructed by the head of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association to not ask patients where the marijuana came from. In other words, our state is practicing a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to where patients are getting marijuana.

So, that begs the question, where are patients getting marijuana?

Many are continuing to buy on the black market, while others take a quick trip across the border to Oklahoma or Arkansas and purchase from a dispensary. But, technically speaking, there is no legal store at which a patient can buy medical marijuana here in Missouri…at least, not yet. That’s expected to change in 2020.

The Department of Health and Senior Services is scheduled to start releasing business licenses for folks in the medical marijuana industry over the next two months. The first businesses to get their licenses will be the testing facilities on December 19th. But dispensaries will not receive their licenses until approximately January 24, 2020.

Originally, licenses were expected to be issued before the end of 2019, but because of the large number of applicants (over 2,100 in total!), DHSS has extended their timeline. As patients, we’re tired of waiting. But we also can appreciate the time and care that goes into reviewing all of those applications.

“The high level of interest from patients and facility applicants has presented unique challenges for our team as they have implemented the constitutional amendment which will make medical marijuana available to qualified patients in Missouri,” said Dr. Randall Williams, director of DHSS. “I am pleased to report that we have been true to our goal of keeping patients first by moving the program forward as efficiently as possible.”

The Missouri Medical Marijuana Program is indeed moving forward, but the exact day we can expect to be able to purchase legal medical marijuana in our cities is unclear. Cultivation licenses are supposed to be issued the day after Christmas. In theory, this gives cultivation centers about one month to produce their first crop to sell to dispensaries. However, getting a smokeable harvest typically takes closer to three months, not including the time it takes to test and package it.

Michigan faced a similar problem when medical marijuana dispensaries opened. There wasn’t enough marijuana available from licensed cultivation centers to stock the shelves. So, the state allowed dispensaries to buy untested flower from caregivers. The program was a success, and many dispensaries found the product from caregivers to be far cheaper than what they bought from industrial sized farms. However, the program ended in May of 2019. If Missouri did something similar when cannabis stores first open, patients would be able to buy legal marijuana much sooner than anticipated.