DHSS Says Missouri Patients Can Possess Medical Marijuana

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services issued a letter January 28 that clarifies a patient’s right to possess medical marijuana even though no dispensaries have opened.

DHSS was asked to clarify the issue after confusion over the law.

“Article XIV does not directly address this question,” said Lyndall Fraker, director of the DHSS section for medical marijuana regulation. “However, what does appear throughout Article XIV are rights and protections for authorizied medical marijuana patients that are not activated by circumstances other than possession of a valid medical marijuana identification card.”

In other words, Fraker said, Article XIV establishes a right to possess and use medical marijuana once approved by DHSS, mandates that DHSS approve qualifying patients well before DHSS is required to license dispensaries and never specifies that these patient rights are only applicable after dispensaries are operating.

Fraker pointed to the timeline of Missouri’s medical marijuana to explain how DHSS has arrived at this opinion.

The state began qualifying patients for medical marijuana on June 28, 2019. On August 3, 2019, the state began accepting applications for various medical marijuana facilities.

“By operation of the mandated timelines outlined in Article XIV, there is no question it was inevitable that individuals would be authorized for the medical use of marijuana before any business would be licensed to operate as a dispensary,” Fraker wrote. 

Fraker said the “realities of preparing medical marijuana for sale,” which includes several months of cultivation and testing, guaranteed it would not be ready for sale until well after the facilities were licensed.

Fraker addressed the question of how, if medical marijuana patients are authorized to possess it despite a lack of licensed dispensaries, where they would acquire it.

“Article XIV does not address this question,” he wrote. “As has been the case in every state that has legalized the possession of marijuana, it is a difficult reality that there is no legal method of initially acquiring marijuana, unless that marijuana is somehow discovered in the wild.”

Fraker said that is true for both licensed facilities and authorized patients.

As of January 27, 30,261 patients, 840 caregivers and 9,709 patient/caregiver cultivators have received a medical marijuana identification card.

Missouri issued 192 licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries in January. Twenty-four licenses were issued to each of the state’s eight congressional districts.