Man in a skunky-smelling car pulled up right behind cruiser parked on side of roadway

A Missouri driver is likely questioning his decision to pull up behind a parked cruiser after a cop sniffed out a suspiciously skunky smell coming from his vehicle and busted him for illegal cannabis.

While on patrol earlier this month, an officer with the Smithville Police Department (SPD) spied a mama duck and her ducklings trying to cross Highway 169, according to a police statement.

Presumably wanting to serve and protect, the officer activated the patrol car lights to slow any traffic and allow time for the family to complete its treacherous trek.

Rove launched its cannabis vape products into dispensaries across Missouri. Produced locally using a solventless CO2 extraction, 10 SKUs of Rove vapes are now available across the region, with more SKUs on the way this summer. 

The proposal to open up medical cannabis records overwhelmingly passed the Missouri state House on Tuesday.

Members of the Missouri House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a measure to “pry open a trove of secret state records that detail the ownership structures of [the state’s] medical marijuana companies,” according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The proposal was included in a larger bill as an amendment, and it “on a bipartisan 128-6 vote,” the newspaper reported. It now heads to the state Senate.

The measure was motivated by lawmakers’ frustration with a lack of transparency surrounding the state’s licensed medical cannabis businesses. 

There are more than 181,000 Missourians carrying medical marijuana cards.

Cannabis advocates in Missouri who want the state to become the next to legalize cannabis for adult use have reached a new milestone in their ballot drive with two weeks to spare.

Legal Missouri 2022, a group petitioning to put recreational cannabis on the ballot, announced that it collected more than 200,000 voter signatures to date as outreach efforts escalate ahead of the May 8 signature submission deadline. 

A legislative push and initiative petition face looming deadlines in the coming weeks

With the end of the legislative session only weeks away, and organizers of an initiative petition campaign sounding the alarm about an even more pressing deadline, dueling efforts to legalize marijuana in Missouri face uncertain fates.

In the legislature, GOP state Rep. Ron Hicks is sponsoring a bill to legalize possession and use of marijuana for individuals 21 and older. 

But while it received a committee hearing in early March, it took nearly a month to get a vote — and when it did, a pair of amendments were added that the bill’s supporters labeled poison pills. 

“Do we still have time? Yes,” said Hicks, noting the legislature will adjourn at 6 p.m. on May 13.

Abe Givins sunk into a leather armchair at the Cola Private Lounge in St. Louis on Saturday afternoon, where his company hosted a panel of doctors speaking about medical marijuana.

Givins is co-owner of Village, which advertises itself as the only vertically-integrated medical marijuana company in Missouri that’s 100% minority owned — meaning they have licenses to grow, manufacture and sell marijuana products. 

A key part of the company’s mission, Givins said, is fighting for social equity in the cannabis industry, particularly in light of how the war on drugs has ravaged minority communities.

Missouri is trying to introduce legal cannabis. It remains to be seen if it will pass or remain unattainable for the state.

A Missouri lawmaker introduced a comprehensive bill to legalize recreational cannabis on Tuesday. The measure, titled the Cannabis Freedom Act (HB 2704), was introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives by Representative Ron Hicks, a Republican from St. Charles.

If passed, the bill would legalize cannabis for adult-use, regulate recreational cannabis commerce and expunge convictions for past cannabis-related offenses. In a statement, Hicks acknowledged the assistance from interested parties and an Oklahoma colleague in drafting the legislation.

An analysis of state labor shows that, in this state, almost 1 out of 10 jobs was created by the medical marijuana industry.

Legal marijuana is good for business. According to an analysis of state labor from Missouri, nearly 1 in 10 new jobs was linked to the state’s recently functional medical marijuana industry.

The report shows some details of medical cannabis’s first year of operations, calculated between December 2020 and December 2021, showing that medical cannabis created 7,000 new jobs. A total of 77,600 jobs were created overall.