Overtaxed dispensary owners call for cannabis equality

By Jill Draper

It’s an unfair playing field, it’s the Wild West, it’s like Kansas City’s wide open days during Prohibition—choose your metaphor. But overall, it’s a dangerous situation for the consumer and a loss of revenue for local and state government.

So say the owners of official marijuana dispensaries in Jackson County and other areas which are licensed to sell medical and recreational cannabis products and charge an additional layer of required taxes. State law says their products must be grown in Missouri, sold only to adults and tested for contaminants.

These owners say they compete unfairly with smoke shops and gas stations that sell similar intoxicating products to customers of any age, including children, due to a loophole in the state’s marijuana laws. And sometimes the smoke shops illegally sell marijuana grown across state borders or from people’s back yards, they contend.

But when there’s a flourishing black market, perhaps it’s time to change the law? That’s what a new coalition of hemp businesses like American Shaman say. They want to expand and relax the legal marijuana market so that dispensaries can obtain licenses through a process similar to alcohol and tobacco sellers.

Under a committee called Missourians for a Single Market, these businesses plan to circulate a statewide petition with the hope of bringing this issue to the ballot in November 2026.

“It’s a fool’s errand,” says Jack Cardetti of the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association. “It absolutely will not go anywhere.”

According to Cardetti, Missouri’s licensed marijuana industry generated $241 million in state and local taxes last year and nobody wants to mess that up. In Jackson County’s newly approved 2025 budget, for example, leaders anticipate allocating more than $10 million in recreational marijuana sales taxes since collections began in 2023.

The Missourians for a Single Market, however, say their petition (which is yet to be filed) would retain all current taxes. They just want to relax the barriers for sellers.

Missouri has one of the most successful marijuana markets in the nation, notes Cardetti, citing a recent Wall Street Journal article that labels the state “a cannabis mecca.” Its success is due partly to lawmakers working together with the cannabis industry, and partly to geography. Missouri borders eight states and only one (Illinois) allows recreational marijuana.

Right now customers at licensed KCMO dispensaries pay the general sales tax plus a 6 percent state tax, a 3 percent city tax and a 3 percent county tax. Industry leaders are awaiting a ruling from the Missouri Supreme Court on whether stacking city and county taxes, instead of charging one or the other, is legal.

“When you tax cannabis too much, it encourages an illicit market,” says Cardetti.

An illicit market not only results in less tax revenue for the government, he says, but also puts people’s health at risk when they don’t realize they’re buying untested products.

“Unregulated shops sell products that may contain contaminants like mold, pesticides, chromium, arsenic and lead,” says Michele Bowman, VP of operational compliance and security at S1 Enterprises, which operates seven dispensaries in the metro area, including From the Earth at W. 103rd Street and State Line Road. “People have lost their teeth from eating too many gummies with heavy metals,” she cautions.

Will Missouri legislators fix the loophole that allows the sale of marijuana-like intoxicants and focus more on compliance?

That’s what the MoCann Trade association recommends. “Treat all intoxicating products that come from cannabis the same. This would not affect CBD or industrial hemp,” Cardetti argues.

But in April state legislators failed for the third time to pass a law preventing intoxicating hemp edibles like Delta-8 seltzers and hemp-THC gummies as well as vapes from being sold outside of marijuana dispensaries. Critics said it was an attempt to stifle competition, much like a turf war.

The biology is complicated. Hemp and marijuana are varieties of cannabis, but marijuana has a higher resin content that contains psychoactive compounds. In recent years scientists have figured out how to create synthetic versions which are not regulated.

What’s not complicated is the tremendous appetite of the public. “We predicted going from medical to recreational use would increase sales by five to seven times,” Bowman says.

“Instead, it was more like 15 times higher. Some of our stores now have up to 16 cash registers and are seeing 1,000 people a day.”