Under Missouri's new cannabis regulations, labels and packages for marijuana-related products must have limited colors and can't appeal to children or resemble candy. (Photo by Rebecca Rivas/The Missouri Independent)

Marijuana companies face a hard deadline to meet Missouri’s new plain packaging requirements on Sept. 1 — more than a year after the rule was initially put in place. 

For decades, there’s been a global movement urging “plain packaging” on tobacco products — or packaging with limited colors and frills — after numerous studies found it makes cigarettes less appealing to young people. 

Missouri is now a testing ground to see if plain packaging has the same impact for recreational marijuana.

When voters passed the constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in 2022, it included a provision that labels and packaging for marijuana-related products, “shall not be made to be attractive to children.”

Now under new state rules, packaging can only be one primary color, and it can have up to two logos or symbols that can be a different color or several different colors.

“This approach to packaging is familiar to all of us,” said Amy Moore, director of Missouri’s Division of Cannabis Regulation, during a legislative committee hearing last year. “You think about the cereal aisle versus tobacco packaging or over-the-counter medicines.”

The initial deadline for compliance was May 1, but regulators heard from licensees that potential delays in global shipping could impact their ability to receive the packaging in time. 

Now starting on Sept. 1, marijuana manufacturers must package and label all products in division-approved designs before sending them to a dispensary. 

Dispensaries can continue to sell non-compliant products they already have in the store until Nov. 1.

The new rules also require the division to pre-approve the labels, a process that didn’t exist under medical marijuana rules. 

Nick Rinella, CEO of Hippos Cannabis, said companies have seen delays in the state’s approval of their submitted designs.

“The state just doesn’t have the manpower to go through and approve them,” Rinella said. “And until they’re approved, they can’t go onto the shelves in their new packaging.”

Since the approval process opened on Sept. 1, 2023, the division has received nearly 150,000 submissions, said Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the division.

Half of those were submitted within the last 60 days.

“Licensees have had a year to submit applications for approval,” Cox said, “and five months’ notice that they should not expect another extension.”

Cox said all applications are being processed within 60 days.

The constitution says that no marijuana facility can sell edible marijuana-infused candy in shapes or packages that are attractive to children or that are easily confused with commercially sold candy that does not contain marijuana. Penalties include fines of up to $5,000 and a loss of a business license. 

The packaging requirements are part of Missouri’s new cannabis regulation rules that went into effect on July 30, 2023. 

In the division’s first draft of proposed rules last year, it required companies to have only one color on the label. 

That caused an uproar from the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, which argued in a letter to lawmakers that marijuana businesses had already invested “many millions” in packaging designs. And companies did so, the trade association contends, because “attractive, interesting, and attention-grabbing packaging is essential to effectively advertise and promote marijuana product sales.”

After the pushback from both MoCann Trade and some legislators, the agency changed the rule to allow “limited colors.” Another compromise, Moore told lawmakers, was allowing for QR codes on the labels to send consumers to their website for more information. 

Missouri becomes one of few states that require plain packaging in the adult-use cannabis market, according to the Network for Public Health Law. The others include Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey. 

Moore said the rules align with what voters asked for in the constitutional amendment. The requirements regarding children’s safety are more stringent than what was included in the constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana in 2018.

“We have to notice that,” she said, “and say, ‘Apparently we’re to do more, we’re to do better for children and for health.”