Missouri’s medical marijuana licensing for production, cultivation and testing facilities have been approved, with a few Platte County ventures given the go-ahead.
Farma Laboratories, 224 Marshall Road, Platte City, was approved for a medical marijuana testing facility, to check the potency and consistency of products. Another testing facility was approved in the KCI Airport area for Green Precision Analytics, 8248 Northwest 101st Terrace, Kansas City.
No cultivation facilities were approved in Platte County, but CPC of Missouri was licensed in Smithville at 14816 Highway 169, just across the border in Clay County.
A handful of transportation facility licenses were approved late last month in the Kansas City area, but none in Platte County. Licensing for manufacturing facilities and tracking operations are expected later this month.
Licensing for dispensaries — for which several Platte County applications were filed — will also be announced later this month. The dispensaries are expected to open by mid 2020 to provide medical marijuana for the approximately 25,000 Missouri residents who have so far been granted patient identification cards allowing them to purchase, possess and use medical marijuana.
The state will license 192 dispensaries in Missouri this year, with more than 1,100 applications received, including several from Platte County. Dispensaries are proposed in Weston, Dearborn, Platte City, Parkville and Kansas City North.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has been tasked with overseeing the rollout of medical marijuana in Missouri, which was approved by voters in 2018. DHSS has used a third-party blind scoring service to choose which operations to license.
“Throughout this entire process, it has been important to us to be fair and transparent as we implement all pieces of this program,” said Lyndall Fraker, director of the Section for Medical Marijuana Regulation in a press release. “This is why we chose to employ a ‘blind’ application scorer who had no access to applicants’ identifying information.”
While most municipalities — including Kansas City, Riverside and Platte City — have already addressed the zoning ramifications of hosting a medical marijuana business, some, like Weston, have yet to approve updated ordinances. The board of aldermen is expected to discuss a revised ordinance next week.