Missouri Businesses Look to Profit From Medical Marijuana

Bennie Palmentere has been looking for warehouse space lately.

The shelves at River Market Hydro, Palmentere’s small gardening store, are already stacked high with fans, grow lights and row after carefully placed row of plant food.

The urban hipster movement toward growing more food at home has already been good for business. Now Missouri is about to add a new cash crop to the mix: legal medical marijuana.

“Growing is growing. I don’t care what you’re growing,” Palmentere said “Our business is to teach people to grow. This helps us, because it’s basically allowing people to grow plants. If it was orange trees, it would help us too.”

Missourians approved medical marijuana with 65 percent of the vote in November. And while there may be some disagreement about the wisdom of that vote and whether cannabis in its raw form should be considered medicine, there’s no argument over the business opportunity.

Missouri will be doing about $111 million in annual medical marijuana sales by 2025, according to New Frontier Data, an analytics firm that has studied some of the 30-some other states that legalized before Missouri. [Read more at US News & World Report]