Citing COVID and Other Obstacles, the Deadline to Open is Extended for Most Marijuana Businesses
Excerpts taken from the Springfield News-Leader
The majority of Missouri's medical marijuana businesses recently have been granted extensions after failing to meet a one-year operating deadline, according to state authorities at the Department of Health and Senior Services.
That means roughly 260 out of 370 licensed marijuana companies won't have to be open for business until as late as September, rather than one year from the time they were licensed as required under state regulations, authorities said. Marijuana program documents provided to the News-Leader in early January and early February show that roughly 20 more cannabis companies have also asked for deadline extensions.
Taste Buds Dispensary is one of just 36 dispensaries open in the state. By this time, 192 weed stores were supposed to be open.
So far, 78 commercial licenses are completely approved to operate, state records showed on Tuesday. Another 62 companies are in "in progress" with their final inspections, and thus considered almost ready to operate, according to a representative for Missouri Medical Cannabis Trade Association.
The trade association said Monday that Missouri's 102,000 medical marijuana patients can expect to see more marijuana businesses continue to open each week through "late winter" into the rest of the year.
What’s behind the delay?
Jack Cardetti, a prominent political consultant who serves as chief spokesperson for industry group MoCannTrade, insisted that "new facilities will be coming online every single week."
Cardetti said that the MoCannTrade membership, which includes many of the licensed businesses, has reported four big hurdles as they work to open up their dispensaries, cultivation centers and so forth.
The first one is the difficulty in accessing loans.
"This is all done with liquid capital," Cardetti said. "And obviously, with the huge turbulent stock market last year, that did hinder some groups from raising capital."
Cardetti said trade association members reported that local government "delays" also formed an obstacle to complying with regulations not under state marijuana program control: planning and zoning and occupancy permits, for example, and various local safety measures required for cultivation and manufacturing licensees.
"We had weeks," Cardetti said, "if not months, where local government wasn't meeting in person, they didn't have their offices open because of the pandemic."
Cardetti said two forms of construction delay were the other two problems that bedeviled the MoCannTrade membership's quest to get Missouri medical marijuana open for business: Sometimes COVID-19 outbreaks would sideline construction crews until workers had time to recover and get out of isolation.
Other times, it was just hard to obtain necessary supplies, particularly raw materials and equipment needed for growing cannabis or manufacturing "infused products." Examples include sophisticated lighting and humidity controls, devices for extracting THC from raw cannabis flower and other items made in what Cardetti called "small, sort of densely-populated factories."