Marijuana microbusiness license applications open Thursday in Missouri

REPUBLIC, Mo. (KY3) - Missourians can apply for a license to run a marijuana micro-business starting Thursday.

If you apply, you must meet one of the six eligibility requirements and pay a $1,500 application fee, but it will be refunded If you do not get a license in this round.

“Micro-marijuana business licenses enable one to cultivate up to 250 plants at a time, meaning you could have three to four harvests per year,” said MO NORML Attorney Dan Viets. “The criteria in the applications include being relatively poor, and you have to have had an income in at least three of the past ten years below two and a half times the federal poverty level.”

As applications open up, local dispensaries say they are excited more people are coming into the industry.

“This is an exciting time for more cannabis culture and people to be in the business,” said Alex Paulson, one of the owners of Easy Mountain Dispensary in Republic. “We are basically a micro-license as the way it sits now because we’re one of the very few dispensaries that have one license.”

Paulson says he thinks it will balance out product availability.

”This will hopefully bring more craft and boutique cannabis to the market,” said Paulson. “Micro-licenses will have a huge advantage of being able to do so.”

The state will award micro-business licenses to 48 owners split up across Missouri’s eight congressional districts, with six per district. Four of those will be wholesale businesses that can both manufacture products and cultivate the plant.

If you plan to apply, you must have a series of documents, a layout of the proposed business, and where you plan to put it.

The health department will send qualified applications to the Missouri Lottery to randomly select the winners.

To apply for a license, click HERE. Applications close on August 10.

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