420 with CNW – Missouri Opens State’s First Me
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Last Saturday, medical cannabis dispensaries in Missouri made their first legal sales to qualified patients and caregivers. This comes less than two years after voters from Missouri approved a ballot measure to legalize medical cannabis.
N’Bliss Cannabis put up shop and opened doors in Manchester and Ellisville, two different St. Louis County locations. The director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, Dr. Randall Williams, stated in a press release that Missouri patients had always been the state’s north star as they worked towards implementing the state’s medical cannabis program. He added that they greatly appreciated how hard everyone had exerted themselves into ensuring that patients would be able to access a well-regulated and safe program.
Various officials have highlighted the speed at which they got the voter-approved marijuana program off the ground, stating that it was one of the fastest implementations of a medical cannabis program in the United States.
The director of the Section for Medical Marijuana Regulation, Lyndall Fraker, stated in a press release that a huge amount of work had been put in by the team and licensed facilities to get to the point they were at and that they heard from more facilities which were almost ready or ready for their commencement inspections. He added that they looked forward to seeing these facilities open their doors to serve both caregivers and patients.
The Missouri Medical Cannabis Trade Association was the first to announce on Friday that the launch of sales will happen the next day while the Springfield News-Leader was the first to report the good news of this announcement.
The state of Missouri has until now granted licenses to 192 dispensaries and expects that most if not all will have opened by the end of the year. The state also posted an interactive map that can be used to track the status of approved cannabis businesses.
For many months now, regulators have been immersed in appeals and lawsuits challenging the state’s licensing decisions, with revenues that should have been directed into veteran services being diverted and used to cover legal costs.
Furthermore, Missouri is not the only state that launched medical marijuana sales this past weekend. The state of Virginia also had its first medical cannabis dispensary grand opening on Saturday as well. Over in Maine, recreational sales of cannabis were introduced last week, roughly four years after voters had approved a legalization ballot measure.
Many companies are bringing a new twist to the cannabis space, and one interesting one to watch is The Alkaline Water Company Inc. (NASDAQ: WTER) (CSE: WTER). They specialize in making perfectly balanced alkaline (pH of 8. water rich in trace minerals.
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