Voters in Missouri first approved adult-use cannabis legalization in 2022, with the first legal recreational cannabis sales beginning in Missouri in February 2023. Missouri had already legalized cannabis for medical use, and legal medical sales began through Missouri’s dispensaries in October 2020.
Since legal adult-use sales began, Missouri’s dispensaries have sold a reported $2.9 billion worth of recreational products. When combining legal adult-use cannabis product sales and medical cannabis sales in Missouri, the state’s emerging legal cannabis industry crossed the $4 billion total sales milestone in May 2025.
“The Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation has released its annual report for Performance Year 2024, which ran from Dec. 1, 2023, through Nov. 30, 2024.” reported MissouriNet in its local reporting. “The division that regulates marijuana sales reports $1.26 billion in recreational marijuana sales during P24 and $182 million in medical cannabis retail sales.”
In late July 2025, “the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) transferred $23,555,124 in funds generated by Missouri’s adult use marijuana program to agencies as outlined in Article XIV, Section 2, of the Missouri Constitution and approved by House Bill 10.1035,” according to a government press release. Below is a breakdown of the recently transferred funds:
- Missouri Veterans Commission ($7,851,708): for use exclusively for health care and other services for military veterans and their dependent families.
- Missouri State Public Defender ($7,851,708): to be used only for legal assistance for low-income Missourians.
- DHSS ($7,851,708): for grants to increase access to evidence-based, low-barrier drug addiction treatment prioritizing medically proven treatment and overdose prevention and reversal methods and public or private treatment options with an emphasis on reintegrating recipients into their local communities, to support overdose prevention education, and to support job placement, housing, and counseling for those with substance use disorders.
According to a previously published analysis by the Marijuana Policy Project, “states have generated a combined total of more than $24.7 billion in tax revenue from legal adult-use cannabis sales since the first adult-use cannabis markets launched in Colorado and Washington in 2014.” Missouri’s legal adult-use sales generated $2,557,261,326 in tax revenue through March 2025, according to the analysis.