Tag: missouri

Missouri health department to begin enforcing ban on psychoactive cannabis compounds

On Sunday, the state of Missouri will begin enforcing Gov. Mike Parson’s executive order to crack down on psychoactive cannabis products.

The governor has said the products being targeted are often packaged to look like candy and can appeal to children, and they’re sold at convenience stores and other businesses with liquor licenses. The only exceptions will be for products that come from a source approved by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS).

The executive order issued August 1st also required the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control to file an emergency rule to forbid liquor license holders from selling psychoactive cannabis, but the rule has been blocked by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

In a statement, the Department of Health and Senior Services said the rejection of the emergency rule filing “has no impact” on their enforcing the executive order.

“Executive Order 24-10 does not apply to products under the control or purview of the Division of Cannabis Regulation pursuant to Article XIV of the Missouri Constitution and sold by establishments licensed pursuant to Article XIV of the Missouri Constitution,” the statement said.

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Despite Parent Complaints, Suburban Missouri District Keeps R-Rated Books In School Library

When Paula Allen first wanted pornography removed from her child’s school library, she didn’t realize that would be controversial. Everyone, she reasoned, agrees graphic descriptions of sexual intercourse and images of full-frontal nudity found in schools should be immediately removed.

The school board of Missouri’s Cameron R-I district, which serves 1,600 students in a suburb of Kansas City, disagreed. After two years of complaints from parents, this August the district put 36 of 80 challenged books behind the circulation desk, where publicly sponsored pornography continues to be available to minors so long as they have parent permission. Any explicit books that parents haven’t discovered yet, and future books selected by employees who have already used taxpayer funds to buy minors pornography, could still be on the shelves after the district denied parents library access.

“At my very first meeting [with] the superintendent… I all but begged him, ‘Let’s please work together in unity as a group, as parents, we have a concern. You have to address these concerns. Let’s work together,’” Allen explained. “[They] attempted to do essentially a character assassination, to discredit us and to make them, as in the school board and the school district administration, look like victims and make us look like villains. Because we’re standing up for our kids.”

A group of local parents has been battling to protect children in school libraries for more than two years. Allen and Heath Gilbert spoke with The Federalist about their efforts to keep pornographic books out of children’s hands and their school board’s effort to resist. 

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Trans-Identified Male Using Women’s Gym Locker Room Prompts Protest By Patrons, Investigation by Missouri’s Attorney General

A man who began using the women’s locker room at a Missouri gym after changing his legal gender marker has prompted outcry after a patron lodged a formal complaint against him with local police. Eris Discordia Montano, who frequently posts photos of himself with weapons to his social media, was first reported to law enforcement on July 29 after being spotted in the female facilities of the Ellisville Life Time Fitness.

Following the first complaint, several more women came forward to express their concerns about Montano, prompting Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to issue a statement announcing an investigation into the fitness center on August 2. According to a letter from the Attorney General’s office sent to the CEO of Life Time Fitness, Bahram Akradi, women who had complained about Montano’s presence in the women’s locker room were chastised and told to refer to him with the “correct” feminine pronouns.

“It has come to my attention that Life Time Fitness has proudly adopted a policy that permits biological men to use locker rooms designated specifically for women and young girls,” reads the Attorney General’s letter. “Even more concerning is the fact that instead of taking the safety concerns from your gym members seriously, you rudely correct them and insist they call this biological male by the ‘correct pronouns.’ While it might be considered fashionable in certain corporate boardrooms to pretend that biology is irrelevant, the American heartland still lives in reality.”

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MISSOURI’S ATTORNEY GENERAL IS WAGING WAR TO KEEP THE WRONGLY CONVICTED LOCKED UP

WEARING A CRISP gray suit, Christopher Dunn walked into the Division 18 courtroom just blocks west from the famed Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, on May 21. He took his seat at a long table crowded with binders of legal exhibits and surrounded by a half-dozen lawyers working to free him from prison.

It was the same courthouse where Dunn, now 52, was convicted in July 1991 and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 15-year-old Recco Rogers. According to the state, under the cover of darkness Dunn opened fire on Rogers and two other boys while they were sitting on the front steps of a friend’s home.

There was no physical evidence linking Dunn to the murder; he has always maintained his innocence and says that on the night of the shooting he was at home with family watching TV and talking to a friend on the phone until after midnight. The state’s case against Dunn was built solely on the testimony of the two boys sitting with Rogers: 12-year-old Michael Davis and 14-year-old DeMorris Stepp. During truncated police interviews, each boy named Dunn as the shooter. At Dunn’s trial, the prosecutor boldly leaned into the lack of physical evidence: The boys’ testimony was “all the evidence in the case,” he told the jury.

As such, when Davis and Stepp later recanted their stories about Dunn being the assailant, there was nothing left to prop up the prosecution’s case. Although the situation was about as straightforward as they come, thanks to quirks of Missouri law, Dunn found himself in a legal quagmire. He had no way to effectively challenge his conviction. And so it was — until 2021, when a new law offered prosecutors an avenue to overturn convictions they believe were wrongly obtained by their office. In February, Gabriel Gore, St. Louis’ appointed circuit attorney, asked a court to exonerate Dunn. “Both witnesses … now state that it was too dark to see any shooter on May 18, 1990,” Gore wrote in a motion to vacate the conviction. “The recantations alone are enough to show clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.”

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Another Missouri Judge Approves Stacking City And County Marijuana Taxes

Buchanan County can collect a special marijuana sales tax on dispensaries within St. Joseph city limits, a judge ruled Wednesday in the second decision granting counties the right to stack taxes on top of city levies.

Circuit Judge Daniel Kellogg wrote in his two-page ruling that provisions in the recreational marijuana constitutional amendment passed in 2022 do not limit the taxing power of counties within corporate limits of towns and cities.

“To put it bluntly, the court cannot accept [the] plaintiff’s interpretation of ‘Local Government’ to prohibit the power of the county to impose such tax within the Saint Joseph city limits,” Kellogg wrote. “The definition of ‘Local Government’ includes both the city and the county. As such, both are authorized to impose and collect the tax.”

Vertical Enterprises, which is licensed for retail sales, cultivation and marijuana product manufacturing in St. Joseph, sued the Buchanan County Collector’s office, the Missouri Department of Revenue and the Buchanan County Clerk’s office to block enforcement of the tax.

Along with regular sales taxes—which in some locations approach 12 percent—people purchasing marijuana for recreational use also pay a special 6 percent state tax and a local tax of 3 percent if approved by voters.

The ruling will cost Vertical’s customers about $30,000 a month, said Chris McHugh, CEO of the company. There are two other dispensaries in St. Joseph and he estimated their tax payments would be comparable to his.

“Consumers should be outraged,” McHugh said. “They’re paying this.”

Statewide, consumers purchased $1.1 billion worth of marijuana in the first year of recreational use sales.

“This is millions and millions of dollars that never, never should be taken from consumers,” McHugh said. “It’s nothing but an anti-marijuana tax.”

McHugh said he will appeal Kellogg’s decision.

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Terrible: Police Officer Shoots Small Deaf, Blind Dog At Point-Blank Range

Bodycam video captured the moment a police officer in Sturgeon, Missouri, shot and killed a small blind and deaf dog for no apparent reason last week.

Responding to a call about a loose animal, the officer can be seen lazily trying to place a lasso around the canine’s neck before choosing to shoot it in the head instead of continuing to make attempts at leashing the animal.

Later in the video, the dog’s owner approaches the officer and confronts him over the unnecessary shooting.

When the sobbing owner tries getting answers, the cop is defensive and offers half-assed apologies.

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Pregnant women in Missouri can’t get divorced. Critics say it fuels domestic violence

The turning point for Destonee was a car ride.

She describes a scene of emotional abuse: Pregnant with her third child, her husband yelled at her while her older two kids listened in the car. “He would call me awful things in front of them,” she says. “And soon my son would call me those names too.”

She made up her mind to leave him, but when she went to a lawyer to file for divorce, she was told to come back when she was no longer pregnant.

Destonee requested she be identified by only her first name. She says she still lives with abusive threats from her ex-husband. She couldn’t end her marriage because Missouri law requires women seeking divorce to disclose whether they’re pregnant — and state judges won’t finalize divorces during a pregnancy. Established in the 1970s, the rule was intended to make sure men were financially accountable for the children they fathered.

Advocates in Missouri are now pushing to change this law, arguing that it’s being weaponized against victims of domestic violence and contributes to the contraction of women’s reproductive freedoms in a post-Roe v. Wade landscape.

“In Missouri, it feels as though they have really closed down every door in terms of reproductive autonomy,” says Kristen Marinaccio, an attorney and expert in divorce law who has examined these kinds of laws in Missouri and other states. She says beyond the legal and financial ties of marriage, there is powerful emotional weight to legally terminating a marriage. “You might just think, well, it’s a piece of paper,” she says, “but that piece of paper that tells you you’re no longer in this horrible marriage is really freeing for a lot of clients.”

After hearing stories about survivors unable to leave marriages, state Rep. Ashley Aune introduced House Bill 2402. It would allow pregnant women to finalize divorce in Missouri.

Aune says that the law has gone unexamined for too long and that policymakers need to give women the right to leave a dangerous or even life-threatening situation. “How can you look that person in the eye and say, ‘No, I think you should stay with that person,'” says Aune, a Democrat. “That’s wild to me.”

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Missouri Warns Marijuana License Applicants Of ‘Predatory Practices’ Around Social Equity Status

Veterans John and Kara Grady received a Facebook message last week from a man who was “looking for a female veteran to be part of our dispensary license.”

Being a veteran is one of the seven categories that makes people eligible to win one of the state’s social-equity marijuana licenses, called “microbusiness licenses.” The other categories range from having a lower income or living in an area considered impoverished to having past arrests or incarcerations related to marijuana offenses.

When the Gradys—who run Slaphappy Beverage Co., which sells hemp-derived THC drinks—turned him down, the man began attacking them on their social media pages.

“I was like, ‘What kind of tactics are these?’” John Grady said in an interview with The Independent. “You have to ask yourself—if it’s that competitive on the microbusiness licenses, then really what’s going on?”

Just hours before Grady received that message, the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation issued a warning about “predatory practices” in social-equity marijuana licensing throughout the country.

And those tactics are likely escalating, with the next round of applications running April 15 to 29.

“[The Division of Cannabis Regulation] has become aware of solicitation efforts by companies to apply for microbusiness licenses on behalf of qualified individuals with promises of future ownership in the license,” the agency said in a press release last week.

The division warned that some groups are scamming eligible people by giving them, “no agreements in place that would actually result in the eligible individuals being the owners of the license.”

The division recently revoked nine of the 48 social-equity cannabis licenses issued in October—following an investigation by The Independent that found some applicants thought they were partnering with the Michigan investor but in reality signed agreements requiring them to relinquish all control and profits of the business.

The revocations came just as the division was gearing up for the second round of microbusiness applications, and now the state is urging applicants to be extra careful regarding whom they partner with.

“Eligible individuals should exercise caution in accepting such arrangements as some of the solicitations may be predatory in nature,” the division’s Thursday press release states.

Because only 39 of the 48 microbusiness licenses were ultimately issued from the first round, the division will award one additional wholesale license and eight additional dispensary licenses in the upcoming round.

The owners of the revoked licenses have vowed to appeal, though nothing has been filed as of yet.

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Condemned inmate could face ‘surgery without anesthesia’ if good vein is elusive, lawyers say

Missouri’s execution protocol allows for “surgery without anesthesia” if the typical process of finding a suitable vein to inject the lethal drug doesn’t work, lawyers for a death row inmate say in an appeal aimed at sparing his life.

Brian Dorsey, 52, is scheduled for execution Tuesday for killing his cousin and her husband at their central Missouri home in 2006. His attorneys are seeking clemency from Gov. Mike Parson and have several appeals pending.

A federal court appeal focuses on how Missouri injects the fatal dose of pentobarbital. The written protocol calls for insertion of primary and secondary intravenous lines. But it offers no guidance on how far the execution team can go to find a suitable vein, leaving open the possibility of an invasive “cutdown procedure,” Dorsey’s attorneys say.

The procedure involves an incision that could be several inches wide and several inches deep. Forceps are used to tear tissue away from a vein that becomes the injection point.

“It’s surgery,” said Arin Brenner, a federal public defender and one of the attorneys representing Dorsey. “It would be surgery without anesthesia.”

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Missouri Proposal Would Ban Most Delta-8 THC Drinks And Edibles Under State Law

Hemp is often known for being the part of the cannabis plant that doesn’t get people high.

It’s full of CBD, a nonpyschoactive cannabinoid that helps people relax and often found in massage oils and sleep aids.

But much has changed since hemp was taken off the controlled substance list in 2018 by the last U.S. Agriculture Improvement Act, more commonly known as the farm bill.

Now state regulators can barely keep up with the constantly evolving ways that people have found to make intoxicating products from hemp—largely through a chemical process of converting CBD to THC. The market for things like delta-8 drinks and edibles is one of the fastest growing markets in the country.

The fact that it is legal federally was the basis for St. Louis Democratic Sen. Karla May’s opposition to a bill sponsored by state Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance.

“The feds are not stopping the sale of this product,” May said, during a Senate floor debate last week. “What you’re saying is we need to shut down all the businesses that are currently selling this product and making revenue from this product, and then transfer them to all of the people that have gotten marijuana licenses.”

While May was the most vocal critic in the Senate last week, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have pushed back on the idea of forcing the hemp industry under the umbrella of DHSS, saying that would allow the “marijuana monopoly” to take over this market given the limited number of licenses for dispensaries available.

After voters passed a constitutional amendment allowing medical marijuana in 2018, competition for licenses became fierce when the state capped the number of applications it would approve—initially issuing 338 licenses to sell, grow and process marijuana.

Widespread reports of irregularities in how applications were scored fueled criticism of the industry and accusations that insiders were building a monopoly. That criticism spilled into the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in 2022, though the proposal still won voter approval.

Some applicants who didn’t land medical marijuana licenses turned to producing hemp-derived THC products.

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