Two years later, still no medical marijuana sales in Missouri? What’s the holdup?
Missourians who want to buy marijuana to ease their pain are still waiting. That’s a problem for them, and an issue for the rest of us.
It’s been nearly two years since voters amended the state’s constitution to allow marijuana sales for some medical conditions. The measure — Amendment 2, you’ll recall — passed by a nearly two-to-one margin in 2018.
No one expected marijuana to go on sale the day after the election. But there was a reasonable expectation that eligible citizens could get relief sometime in 2020, a belief repeatedly encouraged by state officials.
Last December, cannabis was to be available “a few months into the new year.” Then, mid-summer, in “late July, early August.” No, late summer: mid-September, maybe.
But time moves on, and as September fades into October, and summer becomes fall, you still can’t take your medical card into a shop and buy marijuana for pain relief. Dispensaries are ready — they just have nothing to sell.
“We are still waiting on the first testing facility to ask us for their final approval to operate,” said an email from Lisa Cox, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. “We’re told at least one is very close.”
“Delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, delay,” said a post on modispensaries.com, an unofficial clearinghouse for medical marijuana information. “October?”
Dispensaries report dozens of phone calls each day, most posing the same question: Are you open yet?
“We’ve heard many stories of our neighbors who are suffering various ailments and are growing tired of waiting for access to medicinal marijuana,” said a spokeswoman for the 3rd Street Dispensary in Lee’s Summit, which nevertheless broadly supports the state’s approach to licensing and oversight.
“Our hope is that when people are finally able to enter a dispensary, it will all have been worth the wait,” their emailed statement said.
There are excuses for the postponements, as there always are. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly made it harder for the state to get where it needed to go for testing and oversight. A series of ongoing licensing scandals suck up legislative and administrative oxygen, too.
Marijuana supporters say Missouri is doing better than other states that legalized sale of the drug, even with delays. Arkansans, for example, had to wait 30 months to begin buying medicinal pot after approving it at the polls.
Dispensaries in Oklahoma, on the other hand, began selling cannabis products well within a year after voters approved medical marijuana in 2018.
It’s pretty popular, particularly in the middle of a pandemic. Sales from the first six months of 2020 nearly equalled sales from all of 2019 in Oklahoma.
It will be popular in Missouri, too. Some 60,000 patients have applied for medical marijuana cards. While card holders can legally grow a small amount of marijuana at home, most are waiting for dispensaries to open.
They’ve been waiting. For two years. Many in pain from debilitating diseases. But these delays are a concern for more than patients. All of us should be worried.
For most Americans, government isn’t about policy disputes or disagreements over philosophy. Most Americans simply want the government to actually do what it promises to do.
When it snows, they want the snow cleared. When they need to renew a driver’s license, they want it to be simple and quick. When they’re owed a tax refund, they want the money as soon as possible.
And when voters say they want medical marijuana, they expect the state to provide it in a reasonable timeframe. They judge their government on how well it does its job.
In Missouri, not well. That’s a shame, both for those who want pain relief, and the rest of us, who want a government that works.