Last week Missouri legalized recreational cannabis and become the first state in the nation where voters approved a program for the automatic expungement of prior marijuana convictions. With the legalization bill, which won by a comfortable margin, the is state expanding its current medical marijuana program by allowing existing licensees to serve both medical and non-medical consumers.

Private cannabis companies based in Missouri include Grön, the woman-led producer of handcrafted cannabis-infused edibles; Treez a commerce tech platform that monitors the industry's retail and supply chain and the vertically-integrated, multi-state operator (MSO) Greenlight. To learn more about what cannabis reform means for existing and future companies and for Missouri in general, Benzinga reached out to all three.

“We are excited to start expanding our production and supply to meet the demands of the adult-use market,” Draper Bender president of Grön told Benzinga. “Right now we are currently only offering our Sugar Coated Pearls and our MEGAs but with recent events, we plan on bringing all of our current product offerings as we expand into larger production. With legalization comes new employment and collaboration opportunities, and we look forward to creating more jobs and empowering our community.”

For John Yang, CEO and co-founder of Treez, Missouri’s reform “signifies that cannabis legalization is normalizing.” Furthermore, “The expansion of retail licenses brings forth opportunities for technology companies like Treez to expand our footprint and help retailers boost sales through the power of technology. In addition, there’s a huge opportunity for operators to invest early into the limited medical market as those operators will reap the most benefits as the state transitions into recreational use.”

John Mueller, a Missouri native and CEO of Greenlight, which is one of the largest operators in the state, said he believes Missouri will become an $800 million to $1 billion marketplace. “Greenlight plans to double its staff, add 50% more employees, and anticipate 2.5X their current medical revenue,” he said. “Due to current medical regulations publicly traded companies are not allowed to operate in the state. With the passage of Amendment 3, it opens the doors for publicly traded multi-state operators to attack the likely billion dollar market.”

Grön’s president is impressed with Missouri's medical marijuana program and says the company enjoyed working with its regulatory body. “With any state, we believe that the right approach is for the regulators who are setting the adult-use program rules in place is for them to work closely with the current operators that are on the ground and are dealing with the day-to-day challenges of running the business and working with them to ensure a program that provides successful access to products for the new adult-use consumer and to not lose sight of the existing medical patients and ensuring they still have adequate access to products that help ease their debilitating conditions,” Bender said.

Following the midterms, there are now 21 states with legal adult-use cannabis, which further testifies to the growing support the plant enjoys across the U.S. According to a Gallup poll from November 2022, as many as 68% of U.S. adults support cannabis legalization, but is this enough for it to happen?