"We're working on that as hard as we can to help that," says Meyers, 61. "Because we've seen enough in the last two years of the legislation to know it's not going to happen there. It's not."
A former journalist, Curtis opened his first medical cannabis dispensary in Denver in 2010. He returned to his native St. Louis in 2015 to be closer to his kids. By then Missouri had begun allowing limited CBD oil production. Wanting to stay in the cannabis industry, Curtis gave Meyers a call. He soon joined her team as the man in charge of BeLeaf's cultivation and production programs.
Curtis compares the campaign to legalize medical cannabis to the issue of gay marriage.
"You see a very bright line between generations," says Curtis. "Where above a certain age there's people on both sides, and then above that there is almost universal opposition, but below a certain age there is almost universal support."
And when voters are allowed to weigh in, they tend to be much more open to change than their representatives.
"Again, this is just something where the people are going to have to lead because their elected leaders are educated to the degree their constituents are," he says.
BeLeaf is housed in a former Verizon customer care center at one end of an office park in Earth City. Within its 5,000 square-foot home, BeLeaf both grows hemp plants and makes Noah's ReLeaf, the CBD oil it markets to its clients. The oil contains tiny levels of THC, but not enough to get users high.
From the outside, it looks about as nondescript as any office in any one of countless office parks. Inside, however, it is a marvel of lights, water and plant science technology.
An indoor hydroponic flower room contains row upon row of hemp plants in the final stages of their twelve-week growth cycles. Each plant rests on a sponge-like pad attached to a narrow tube. An automatic irrigation system shoots nutrient-laced water to each plant at precisely timed intervals. The wastewater is caught, recycled and reused. Overhead are 1,000-watt, orange-colored lights that click on and off at twelve-hour intervals to mimic the light of autumn.
But while BeLeaf has lots of oil to sell, it still has too few patients — partly because of the restrictions of Missouri law, but also because of a paucity of physicians in the state willing to recommend medical cannabis. Neurologists at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, in St. Louis, have been helpful, but otherwise it has been difficult to find physicians willing to recommend a drug that, technically, is still illegal under federal law.
The irony is that medical cannabis could make a huge difference in dealing with some of America's biggest health problems, Meyers says.
"The interesting thing is people tend to come to cannabis almost when it's too late," she says. "When a doctor says, 'We can't help you any longer, we've done all the chemo we can, go home, get your affairs in order.' People who don't want to throw in the towel tend to turn to cannabis because they are online and they are researching, and they're seeing this plant can kill tumors and especially certain kinds of cancers that it is incredibly effective on."
The states that have opened their doors to cannabis legalization, such as California and Colorado, are experiencing what some observers are describing as a "Green Rush" — an economic windfall that Missouri could join if the hoped-for ballot initiative passes in 2018.
A Washington Post analysis found that legal cannabis had grown to a $700 million industry in Colorado by 2015. Colorado retailers sold $386 million of medical marijuana and $313 million for purely recreational purposes. The two sides of the market generated $63 million in tax revenue, along with $13 million collected in licenses and fees alone. The Marijuana Industry Group estimated in 2014 that the legal cannabis business also generated 10,000 direct jobs.
What's more, Colorado's legal weed industry grew rapidly, but without any of the terrible consequences that opponents of legalization had predicted. Deadly car accidents remained flat and reports of crime had actually gone down in Denver and the surrounding area, the Post reported.
Meyers has seen for herself how the legal cannabis industry helped transform Denver.
"It's real estate, it's jobs," she says. "I cannot believe how it has helped transform that city. There were neighborhoods that were terrible that are now completely vibrant with housing and work and restaurants. And a lot of it has to do with this industry."
Both Meyers and Curtis are enthusiastic about hemp's vast potential for creating new jobs for thousands of rural Missourians — a vision powered by the state's near-perfect climate and soil for commercial hemp's cultivation cycle and the fact that St. Louis is home to some of the brightest minds in plant sciences, at both Monsanto and the Danforth Plant Science Center, in St. Louis County.
