Missouri

After a few false starts over the past month Missouri’s SB 54, which would be devastating to hemp businesses, was debated on the Missouri Senate floor.  Several senators came to the rescue, standing on the floor for 7 hours and arguing our position until SB 54’s sponsor withdrew his bill. As Dave Drebes, publisher of the daily newsletter Missouri Scout, wrote this morning, “Although the initial resistance was from Democratic Senators Karla May and Angela Mosley who took aim at what they dubbed the ‘marijuana monopoly’, Republican regulars soon joined in. Senators Curtis Trent and Mike Cierpiot wondered why federally legal businesses — hemp shops — would be forced to have to buy licenses from federally illegal ones — pot dispensaries. Then Sen. Mike Moon worried that the bill would deprive Missourians of gun rights since they would be swept under state cannabis regulations which, when combined with federal gun laws, would keep hemp consumers from legally purchasing guns. And Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman lamented that the government was picking winners and losers again.” If you live in the district of Senators Cierpiot, Coleman, May, Moon, Mosley, Roberts, or Trent, please email them ASAP and thank them for their efforts on our behalf yesterday.  A big thank you to all hemp supporters for taking action to ensure that these bills, which would have been detrimental to the hemp industry in their respective states, were not passed into law!