Missouri Announces Marijuana Microbusiness License Awardees

An additional 48 licenses will be issued in 2024 and 2025

Oct 3, 2023 at 11:16 am

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SHUTTERSTOCK

The microbusiness licenses are supposed to help those from underrepresented backgrounds gain entry into the industry.

Late yesterday, Missouri’s Division of Cannabis Regulation announced the first round of successful applicants to the state's marijuana microbusiness license program. The 48 awardees were selected in a random blind lottery on August 28.

The Division of Cannabis Regulation says that the winners were drawn from a pool of more than 1,600 applications. Geography, however, played a role: Each of Missouri's eight congressional districts have six microbusinesses from this round.

The microbusiness licenses are a provision of Amendment 3, the constitutional amendment that legalized recreational cannabis in Missouri. The amendment's creators say that the program is intended to ease the entry of people from disadvantaged or marginalized backgrounds into an industry that has so far been overwhelmingly white in Missouri.

Critics of the measure say the microlicenses will have the opposite effect, further limiting minority entrepreneurs, since licensees will only be able to work with other similar facilities and not non-micro businesses.

An additional 48 licenses will be issued in 2024 and 2025.

For more details and to see a list of approved and denied licenses, visit health.mo.gov/safety/cannabis/microbusiness.php.