A Missouri campaign is set to submit to the state within days a 2026 ballot initiative that aims to unify hemp and marijuana regulations, creating parity between the two cannabis industries with a revised licensing system and legislative mandates to amend current laws.
“The reality is, it’s the same plant,” Eapen Thampy, who is coordinating the Missourians for a Single Market campaign, told Marijuana Moment. “It should be regulated in one fashion.”
“Part of this is ensuring that hemp is regulated and protected, and marijuana is brought down to the free market level in terms of who can produce and sell it fairly,” he said.
Not everyone in the cannabis space is on board with the proposal, however, with at least one Missouri marijuana industry association arguing that it would amount to a “repeal” of the voter-approve legalization law, while primarily benefitting the hemp market.
Thampy, for his part, said there are two driving motivations behind the initiative.
First, it’s responsive to a perception that the current cannabis system in Missouri is “broken and corrupt,” he said, with opaque licensing processes that have awarded some while leaving many applicants behind without adequate transparency.
Second, the initiative is meant to level the playing field between the marijuana and hemp markets. The former “got everything they wanted” from a voter-approved legalization measure, Thampy said, and they’ve also worked to advance legislation undermining hemp businesses.
The marijuana legalization law that voters passed in 2022 enshrined regulations in the state Constitution, removing the legislature’s ability to make certain adjustments. The coalition behind the forthcoming initiative is aiming to strike much of that language and instead give a constitutional mandate for lawmakers to develop statutory rules themselves.
During a stakeholders meeting last week, organizers of the new initiative effort outlined next steps for the campaign. Once the measure is filed with the secretary of state’s office—which is expected within days—there will be a 50-day review process after which officials can certify the language and clear advocates for signature gathering.
The plan is to gather about 300,000 signatures from registered voters, beginning in mid-October. About 180,000 must be valid to secure ballot placement, with specific requirements for signature thresholds from the state’s congressional districts.
As of mid-July, Missourians for a Single Market reported $6,000 in contributions for the effort, according to the Missouri Ethics Committee.
“This process is an immense logistical task,” even if the initiative itself is “pretty simple,” Thampy said during the meeting.
“If we are successful, our draft language envisions a licensing system that’s similar to tobacco and alcohol. So what that really means is there’s no limit on licensing, and the process for getting a license should be vastly simplified,” he said. “We also grandfather and/or have a protection for existing businesses, so we ensure that existing hemp and marijuana businesses have the opportunity to participate in licensure without jumping through any extra hoops and hurdles.”
“The idea here is, in the state of Missouri, we already regulate pharmacies, we already regulate alcohol, we already regulate tobacco and, for an adult-use product, we know how to do things like age-gating,” he said.
“This proposal is: Let’s regulate the commercial side of this in very similar ways, through the ways that we already handle alcohol and tobacco—and that goes for the entire spectrum of legal commerce, from your bars and your restaurants to your convenience stores, gas stations, head shops, grocery stores and other mass market retail establishments, your independent user venues and so forth.”
He also said that, under the current rules, there are a limited number of marijuana dispensaries throughout the state, which doesn’t adequately meet consumer demand, forcing some to drive upwards of an hour to get to a licensed retailer.
Further, “with the over regulation in the marijuana side, you’re really talking about limited selection of products with high costs,” Thampy argued.
Among the forthcoming initiative’s provisions is one particularly unique policy that would make it so people could not only grow their own cannabis at their private residence, but also sell the product directly to other adult consumers or to retailers through a regulated pathway that involves testing.
“We want to expand and protect the ability of the individual adults to grow their own cannabis and process it for their own use,” Thampy said.
Other notably provisions in the initiative include those that would allow adults to self-certify as medical marijuana patients, provide a pathway for expungements for those with convictions for possession, sale or distribution of cannabis before August 2027 and mandate retroactive tax relief for cannabis businesses that have been deprived of their ability to deduct federal taxes under the Internal Revenue Service code known as 280E.
Pushing back against critics in the marijuana industry, campaign consultant Ryan Johnson said at the stakeholder meeting that “it’s not an understatement to say that the other side has really decided that they want to capture all market share and shift most of the products…to be exclusively sold by the current licensees as well as the current dispensary owners, and really capture and take your market share.”
“From what I can tell, this is a strategy to not only capture market share for themselves, but to effectually put you out of business or change your businesses considerably,” he said, referring to hemp business owners attending the meeting. “So this then really takes on the look and the feel of a Hail Mary effort by people in your shoes and your businesses to essentially save yourselves and then create a free and fair, unified, single market for your products—where you could then have the opportunity to thrive.”
The current system is “not really a monopoly right now—but it’s very close,” Johnson said. “It’s technically what’s called an oligopoly, where you have a handful of players that have similar products and services that really own the market, and they create barriers for everyone else. They want to grow and continue that market and capture market share exclusively for themselves to the detriment of other people.”
Those comments were responsive to a local proposal in St. Louis County that would have made it so intoxicating hemp products could only be sold at the jurisdiction’s medical cannabis dispensaries. That bill stalled at a recent meeting, however.
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Andrew Mullins, executive director of the MoCannTrade, told Marijuana Moment in June that the forthcoming initiative would effectively “repeal Missouri’s twice voter-approved cannabis legalization” laws, referring to the passage of medical and adult-use reform measures.
“Missouri’s licensed, regulated marijuana industry generated $241 million in state and local tax revenues last year alone and is roundly regarded as one of the most impactful in the entire country,” he said at the time.
Drastically changing the state’s cannabis policy “would be a spectacular failure, especially since it’s funded by bad actors who are currently selling unregulated cannabis made overseas to Missouri children in gas stations and smoke shops,” Mullins argued. “Missourians aren’t about to take hundreds of millions away from local communities, veterans and our justice system, all in hopes that politicians will eventually replace it with something down the road. The voters of the Show-Me-State are far too smart for that bait and switch.”
Meanwhile, Missouri’s hemp market has been facing increased pressure from the state as officials attempt to crack down on businesses selling intoxicating cannabis products such as THCA outside of the marijuana program. The state attorney general sent over a dozen cease-and-desist orders to such businesses in June, threatening potential legal action for non-compliant businesses.
Lawmakers have contemplated multiple approaches, with different details on what kinds of products would be allowed and what limits would be set on THC levels in the products.
In February, legislation allowing low-dose intoxicating hemp beverages to continue to be sold in grocery and liquor stores was reported favorably by committees in both the House and Senate but was not enacted into law.
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