Missouri's Hemp Ban Survives Its Only Lawsuit. November 12 Is Final.

On November 4, Senior U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool granted Missouri's motion to dismiss the only lawsuit standing against HB 2641, the Intoxicating Cannabinoid Control Act. The 18-page order in MoHemp Trade Association v. Kehoe holds that the 2018 Farm Bill does not preempt the law, that the vagueness claim fails, and that the plaintiffs lack standing on a dormant Commerce Clause claim they would have lost anyway. Their injunction motion was denied as moot in a footnote. No injunction was ever in place. Eight days before the effective date, nothing is.

That afternoon Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced consumer-fraud suits against four hemp retailers, one of them the Des Peres store of CBD Kratom, whose parent company MNG 2005 had just lost the federal case. The petitions are dated October 16 and October 30. The office had them drafted, waited for the order, and announced both in one release. The state did not wait for the ink to dry because it had already done the writing.

Missouri is now the first state where the whole intoxicating hemp shelf closes on November 12, the federal first-stage date, every gummy included rather than the narrow federal slice. The industry's three-count playbook has now lost in the Fourth, Eighth and Tenth Circuits, in Hawaii and in Missouri. The one theory that moved a court this year was Ohio's, about where hemp is grown rather than whether it sells, and Missouri's drafters stayed clear of it.

Is Missouri's hemp ban blocked by a court?

No. The only challenge to HB 2641 was dismissed November 4, 2026, no injunction was ever entered, and the plaintiffs' request for one was denied as moot the same day. The law takes effect November 12 for lab-made cannabinoids, smokable hemp with any THCA and every hemp THC gummy; most other hemp products follow December 11.

The docket: filed July 16, motion to dismiss August 4, opposition August 24, reply September 8. The plaintiffs did not ask for an injunction until October 9, five weeks before the effective date; the last brief landed October 29, and six days later the court dismissed the case underneath it, 111 days after the complaint. Any appeal goes to the Eighth Circuit, which decided Bio Gen v. Sanders in June 2025 on nearly the same arguments; a notice is due within 30 days, and the hemp ban tracker will log it.

What did the judge actually rule?

Three things. HB 2641 is not preempted by the 2018 Farm Bill, because the statute disclaims any conflict with federal law and leaves hemp transport through Missouri alone. The vagueness count fails facially and as applied, since nothing has been enforced yet. And the plaintiffs lack standing on the dormant Commerce Clause count, which fails on the merits regardless.

The Eighth Circuit already wrote the preemption section. Bio Gen held that the Farm Bill's only preemption clause stops a state from blocking hemp shipments passing through, and HB 2641 says in its own text that nothing in it prohibits hemp transport through Missouri or conflicts with the Farm Bill. Count III gone.

The vagueness count fell on a pleading problem. The complaint attacked only section 195.900 of a five-section Act, so the facial challenge failed, and the as-applied challenge failed because the plaintiffs had pleaded it was "impossible to determine" whether their products would be hemp or marijuana. A plaintiff who cannot say whether a law reaches him cannot show an injury that is "certainly impending," and that concession sank standing too. (The order also calls a congressional delay of the federal date a "wholly speculative assumption." Congress enacted one September 2, seven weeks after the complaint the court judged as written.)

The dormant Commerce Clause count got a merits ruling as a backstop: the licensing rules apply equally to Missouri and non-Missouri companies, and the state having issued its constitutional maximum of 68 cultivation, 224 dispensary and 91 manufacturing licenses "equally limits in-state and out-of-state would-be sellers." A complete answer to the discrimination claim, and a bleak one for anyone hoping to get licensed: there are none left.

What closes in Missouri on November 12?

Every intoxicating hemp product except some drinks. From November 12, lab-made cannabinoids such as delta-8, anything synthesized outside the plant, smokable hemp with any THCA, and every gummy, candy, tablet, capsule, oil or baked good carrying hemp delta-9 above the plant's natural level are marijuana under Missouri law, sold only by licensed dispensaries.

The penalty is a $5,000 fine per transaction and a class D felony for growing, making, testing, transporting or selling a hemp-derived cannabinoid product without an Article XIV license. A transaction is one unit, a unit inside a multiunit package included, so a ten-pack is ten transactions on the statute's own arithmetic. The same section bars unlicensed sellers from using "dispensary" in a business name, and two of the four stores sued this week have it in theirs. Online orders stop the same day, since retail sale by anyone but a licensed facility is the offense; the timeline lines the state date up against the federal ones.

Drinks are the exception. Beverages with naturally occurring cannabinoids that were not synthesized outside the plant stay outside Article XIV until December 11, sold 21 and over, under the Division of Cannabis Regulation's September guidance. The statute's catch-all category follows the federal date whenever Congress delays it, and Congress did. At least one outlet reads the beverage clause differently; the division's reading is the one with enforcement attached.

Who did the Attorney General sue, and why does it matter outside Missouri?

Four retailers, in four circuit courts, all under the Merchandising Practices Act: Puffers Choice in Aurora (Lawrence County), MNG 2005, trading as CBD Kratom Cannabis Dispensary, in Des Peres (St. Louis County), Thooli LLC, trading as Herb Depot, in Independence (Jackson County), and Token Hemp Company, trading as Token THC Dispensary, in Rock Port (Atchison County).

The petitions describe undercover purchases on October 8 sent to a state-licensed lab: flower sold as hemp at Puffers Choice came back above five percent delta-9 THC, over fifteen times the hemp ceiling, and CBD Kratom's at more than ten times. The state asks each court for an injunction and a $1,000 civil penalty per violation, and against three of the four for a declaration that the store is a drug-den public nuisance under section 195.253, a statute written for the kind of building police board up, now pointed at a strip-mall hemp shop with a Google listing.

None of this needed HB 2641. Every attorney general already owns consumer-protection and nuisance statutes, which is why the "dispensary" signage the new law bans from November 12 is being attacked as deceptive today, and why other states will see the same after December 11. The federal law changes what a product is; state consumer law decides what happens to the store.

MNG 2005 is the company to watch: 55 stores in five states, twelve in Missouri, no dispensary or manufacturing license and, per the order, no way to get one. A week to the effective date, and a nuisance petition on one of the twelve.

What does a Missouri buyer do now?

Switch channels before November 12. Missouri has 224 licensed dispensaries, a 100 mg per package and 10 mg per serving edible standard, and an 800 mg per-transaction limit on infused products. A hemp gummy labeled 25 to 50 mg has a dispensary equivalent at a known dose; the Missouri directory lists stores in five cities.

On From The Earth's downtown Kansas City menu on November 5, an Illicit Slaughtermelon pack, ten gummies at 10 mg, was $18 before tax, $1.80 a gummy, with a buy-one-get-one-half-off deal on Illicit edibles running through the same day. The 50 mg buyer is not stranded: the same menu has Illicit's Berry Blackout, ten 50 mg pieces, at $50 and a 300 mg Wyld Raspberry pack at $45. Low-dose buyers break even or save; bulk buyers pay more per milligram and get a label the state's lab has not contradicted.

The dose is the part worth slowing down on. The dosing guide puts 5 to 15 mg in the moderate band and 15 to 30 in the high band, where a 25 mg hemp gummy sat all along without saying so. People who report the smoothest switch describe starting at one 10 mg piece and adding a second only after the first has fully arrived.

Stocking up is still bad advice, and the Attorney General's lab results are the reason: a drawer of gummies whose labels the state says it cannot trust is not an asset, and gummies have a shelf life of their own. For anything bought outside Missouri, the December 11 checker takes the label and says whether it survives the federal date. For Missouri the checker runs a week late: the state's date is November 12, and as of November 4 no court is reading it any other way.