A Missouri campaign is set to submit to the state within days a 2026 ballot initiative that aims to unify hemp and marijuana regulations, creating parity between the two cannabis industries with a revised licensing system and legislative mandates to amend current laws.
“The reality is, it’s the same plant,” Eapen Thampy, who is coordinating the Missourians for a Single Market campaign, told Marijuana Moment. “It should be regulated in one fashion.”
“Part of this is ensuring that hemp is regulated and protected, and marijuana is brought down to the free market level in terms of who can produce and sell it fairly,” he said.
Not everyone in the cannabis space is on board with the proposal, however, with at least one Missouri marijuana industry association arguing that it would amount to a “repeal” of the voter-approve legalization law, while primarily benefitting the hemp market.
Thampy, for his part, said there are two driving motivations behind the initiative.
First, it’s responsive to a perception that the current cannabis system in Missouri is “broken and corrupt,” he said, with opaque licensing processes that have awarded some while leaving many applicants behind without adequate transparency.
Second, the initiative is meant to level
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