The state House on Tuesday voted to pry open a trove of secret state records that detail the ownership structures of Missouri’s medical marijuana companies.
Lawmakers approved the plan, as an amendment to an unrelated bill, on a bipartisan 128-6 vote. The House sent the underlying bill dealing with local governments back to the Senate for consideration.
The amendment’s sponsor, Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis, said the Department of Health and Senior Services rebuffed efforts by the House Special Committee on Government Oversight to obtain the ownership records.
He said that means lawmakers have no way of knowing whether business entities received more licenses than allowed under the 2018 constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana.
The constitutional amendment limits “entities under substantially common control” to five dispensary licenses, three cultivation licenses and three manufacturing licenses.
The state initially issued 338 licenses to sell, grow and process cannabis.
“We need statutory language to make it very explicit that they have to provide us that information,” Merideth said Tuesday.
His legislation also said the records would be used to determine whether the state “adequately” used its authority to grant or deny licenses; whether the program has unreasonably restricted patient access; whether license scoring provisions meet constitutional muster; and whether there is a need for the state to lift license limits. [Read more at St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
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