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“There’s a financial incentive to exaggerate potency and to ignore adulterants.”
By Suzanne King, The Beacon
This story was originally published by The Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.
Missouri plans to spend millions from state marijuana taxes on a laboratory to help regulators keep tabs on the safety and potency of more than $1 billion of joints, edibles and other cannabis products sold annually across the state.
Health experts and consumer groups applauded the added regulatory check, outlined in an October 11 report about Missouri’s cannabis industry. A dozen other states already have quality assurance laboratories known as reference labs.
“We don’t want to just look at compliance with rules,” said Amy Moore, director of Missouri’s Division of Cannabis Regulation. “We want to look at the results as well.”
Moore said the new reference laboratory, which will operate out of the Missouri State Public Health Laboratory in Jefferson City, is expected to be fully operational by fall 2025. The state appropriated $3.8 million for the lab in fiscal year 2024 and $2.4 million in fiscal 2025.
Testing will include identifying the levels of cannabinoids, including the psychoactive compound THC, and looking for contaminants like pesticides, heavy metals, mold and other pathogens.
Missouri, which legalized medical marijuana in 2018 and recreational weed in 2022, has licensed 10 private laboratories around the state to test cannabis products before they are packaged for sale. But those labs’ tests are paid for by the companies making and selling the products.
Observers said the new state-run lab will help address that conflict of interest.
“There’s a temptation on the part of the [private] labs to give their customers the results they want,” said Dan Viets, a Columbia lawyer who chairs the national board of directors for NORML, an advocacy group that long sought to legalize marijuana and aims to represent consumers in the growing legal market. “There’s a financial incentive to exaggerate potency and to ignore adulterants.”
Deceptive labeling—especially if a product is advertised as being less potent than it actually is—is also a reason for serious health concerns.
“You could overdose,” said John Foxworth, a professor who studies pharmacology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. “You could have a car accident. You could fall.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that serious health conditions, such as cannabis use disorder, are on the rise. The drug can negatively affect the brain, heart and other bodily functions.
Foxworth said the wide variety of cannabis products on the market, in many different forms, makes accurate testing by any lab difficult. Buyers should beware, he said.
“These new marijuana products are actually pretty potent,” Foxworth said.
In fact, Missouri’s constitutional amendment that legalized marijuana for Missourians 21 and older bans the state from imposing potency limits. But if that’s a concern to health experts, it isn’t dampening sales.
Jack Cardetti, a spokesman for the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, which represents cannabis retailers, growers and manufacturers, said Missouri sales during the first half of 2024 surpassed all but four other states where recreational marijuana is legal. That includes nearby Colorado.
“Missouri was in a great situation,” Cardetti said. “We had a robust medical cannabis market.”
When recreational sales became legal, he said, businesses were ready. And the state acted quickly to convert medical licenses to “comprehensive” licenses, which add on the right to make recreational sales.
Since the end of 2020, retail sales in the state have topped $3 billion, including $1.98 billion in recreational sales and $1.04 billion in medical sales.
Overall, legalizing recreational sales meant a major dip in revenue from medical cannabis sales, which slipped to $136 million in 2024 from $302 million the previous year. Taxes also dropped on medical sales, but recreational tax collections are making up for it.
The state charges a 4 percent tax on medical sales and 6 percent on recreational sales.
According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services’s annual report, medical cannabis revenue deposited with the state was about $6.3 million in fiscal year 2024, down from $26 million the previous year. The state saw revenues from recreational cannabis of $30 million in fiscal year 2024, compared with $22 million the previous year.
Simply regulating the relatively new industry eats up $32 million.
Medical tax windfalls go to the Missouri Veterans Commission to support veterans homes and other approved services. In the 2024 fiscal year, the taxes funneled $13 million to the veterans fund.
Recreational taxes are designated to cover the cost of government expungements—scrubbing away marijuana convictions. While remaining dollars go to the veterans commission, grants for drug addiction treatment and prevention programs and to the public defender system for legal assistance for low-income Missourians. In the 2024 fiscal year, $1.3 million was allocated to each program.
This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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