ST. LOUIS — Missourians won’t vote on fully legalizing marijuana until later this year. But the industry is confident.
Over and over at its latest convention on Friday, leaders of one of the state’s newest business sectors spoke of the change as inevitable, citing hundreds of thousands of petition signatures and promising polls. They even invited state regulators to the event, at Union Station, to discuss how things would work when recreational use gets underway.
“I really debated about whether it was presumptuous to have this conversation,” convention organizer Karin Spinks Chester told a crowd. “But 390,000 signatures convinced me.”
The remarks kicked off a two-day celebration of an industry that in just four years has gone from nothing to selling $1 million in product per day, employing more than 7,000 people and serving more than 180,000 patients. The convention’s first day catered to industry personnel; Saturday is for medical
