Gross sales of adult-use marijuana in Missouri set a brand new month-to-month file in December, capping off complete hashish gross sales for all of 2023 amounting to greater than $1.3 billion.
Leisure hashish purchases final month totaled $106.5 million, shattering the state’s earlier $98.7 million file set in July.
Since hashish gross sales to adults 21 and older started in February of final yr, Missouri has recorded almost $1.04 billion in complete adult-use gross sales.
The all-time complete recorded hashish gross sales in Missouri, together with medical and adult-use gross sales, now sits at $1.94 billion, in accordance with the latest accessible information from the Missouri Division of Well being and Senior Companies’s Division of Hashish Regulation.
Medical marijuana gross sales, in the meantime, have slowed over the yr. They got here in at $16.8 million in December—near the bottom month-to-month quantity in 2023 and much lower than the $40.3 million in gross sales that dispensaries noticed a yr earlier.
As in lots of states, medical sales have slipped as adult-use shops open extra broadly. The variety of enrolled sufferers and caregivers in Missouri’s medical marijuana system has additionally fallen in the course of the state’s first yr of authorized gross sales to adults. As of final month there have been 106,627 registered sufferers at present in this system—down from 204,165 a yr earlier.
Because the state approaches the primary anniversary of authorized adult-use gross sales, officers are nonetheless working to make accompanying modifications to the felony justice system. Earlier this month, state courts requested lawmakers for an extra $3.7 million to proceed expunging previous cannabis-related felony information, noting that many older information usually are not digitized and require guide processing. Courts initially obtained $4.2 million to finish the method.
“From 1989 again, we’re going by each single felony file to seek out out whether or not there’s one thing in there that may qualify,” mentioned Greene County Circuit Clerk Bryan Feemster. “And it’s, as you may think, very sluggish and tedious.”
“Now we have no info,” added Valerie Hartman, spokeswoman for the sixteenth Judicial Circuit Court docket, “nor an estimate on what number of further drug circumstances await our evaluation.”
The legislation has already led to the expungement of greater than 100,000 marijuana circumstances from courtroom information.
Forward of Missouri’s new legislative session, in the meantime, a Democratic lawmaker has pre-filed a invoice that will stop police from utilizing the odor of marijuana as the only foundation of a warrantless car or property search.
The one-page measure says that “the odor of marijuana alone shall not present a legislation enforcement officer with possible trigger to conduct a warrantless search of a motorcar, residence, or different non-public property.”
One other measure, launched by a pair of Republicans, is making an attempt to enshrine in state legislation a coverage that cuts staff’ compensation awards in half for on-the-job accidents if the worker checks constructive for marijuana use—no matter whether or not the employee was chargeable for the incident.
An annual report launched by the Division of Hashish Regulation earlier this month, in the meantime, discovered that extra than 40 % of the house owners listed on functions for state’s social fairness marijuana licenses issued in October have been from exterior Missouri.
“It doesn’t matter the way you utilized—whether or not you’re a part of a gaggle of a number of functions or a single software,” mentioned Abigail Vivas, who oversees the state’s microbusiness program. “We’re going to take a look at all the knowledge to make sure that these are going to really eligible people.”