PINEVILLE, Mo. — Flora Farms is a medical and recreational marijuana dispensary, with locations throughout Missouri. The group decided to move their Neosho location to Pineville and is now serving more Arkansan customers.
The group moved because there is only a certain number of dispensaries that are allowed in the state.
"We moved from Neosho which is a great town and a great city and had been very supportive. But a very small facility, we only had about 2500 square feet, no drive-thru, and only for three or four maybe five customer registers," Mark Hendren, president of Flora Farms, said. "Missouri is what we call a limited license state only has about 220 dispensaries statewide. And so there's not the opportunity to just go out and open a dispensary."
The Pineville location officially opened on Jan. 5. Hendren said they've already seen success.
Hendren said he knows some believe the dispensary is controversial being so close to Arkansas where recreational marijuana use is not legal, and Arkansans might go there anyway.
In Missouri, anyone can purchase recreational marijuana as long as they have a government-issued ID verifying that they're 21 years of age.
"We are under camera surveillance, if the state wants to observe what we're doing at any time, or for a period for up to two months after the fact, they can do that," Hendren said. "We believe that's one of the reasons the voters in Missouri approved this plan and approved recreational as they'd seen that it is a very regulated belt, very well-run licensing authority."
As for Arkansas' medical marijuana revenue, Scott Hardin, spokesperson for the Medical Marijuana Commission for Arkansas and the Department of Finance and Administration, said revenue has increased every year since the industry launched in the state in 2019.
"Overall, we've collected about $120 million in state tax revenue in total. Last year, in 2023, we collected about $31 million," Hardin said. "We're pushing 100,000 patients in the state with active medical marijuana cards."
In 2022, when asked about the proposed constitutional amendment that would've legalized marijuana in Arkansas, which did not pass, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said "I don't think that with the drug epidemic that we have across this state, frankly across the country, that adding and giving more access to that does anything to benefit Arkansas, so I certainly wouldn't be supportive of that."
Missouri legalized recreational marijuana use in November 2022 and it went into effect in February 2023. Medical marijuana has been legal in Arkansas since November 2016 and the first dispensary in the state opened in 2019.
"We would assume that if sales were really taking a hit from the Missouri locations, if we were really seeing an impact from it, that we will see it in the revenue we're collecting, we would see it in the day-to-day numbers," Hardin said. "For the northern Arkansas dispensaries, those that would really be in competition with the Missouri dispensaries, year to year we are not seeing a sales decrease."
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