Missouri's Market Study Counted 220 Dispensaries. It Couldn't See Who Owns Them.

In the week before Oct. 6, in the Mel Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis, a cannabis businessman named Tim Schlesinger tried to explain to a jury how ownership works in Missouri's marijuana industry. Schlesinger, an owner of a company called TMSKirk, was a defendant in a fight over six cannabis licenses. Under Missouri law, he testified, people can buy a cannabis company and run it before the state approves the sale. "So you can own the car before you get it licensed at the DMV," he said. (S5)

The state may have one owner on paper, he went on, while another company files the tax returns, takes the revenue and acts as the owner. He said it happens at many cannabis companies, and named one: Good Day Farm, the Arkansas-based operator that bought one of the dispensaries in his case. "They are managing it; they're running it; they're branded with it," he said. "The bank accounts are in their names." The Division of Cannabis Regulation did not respond to the Missouri Independent's request for comment on his description. On Oct. 6, the jury sided with the plaintiffs and awarded them $10 million; a defense lawyer, Jeffrey Lowe, said the defense planned a post-trial motion. (S5)

Days later, the same division released the most detailed portrait of Missouri's cannabis market the state has ever commissioned. Its central conclusion is that the market is competitive. Its own fine print says that conclusion cannot tell regulators what Schlesinger was describing: who actually controls the stores. (S1, S2)

The Missouri Cannabis Market Study, Phase 1, was written by Cannabis Public Policy Consulting, a New York firm, for the Department of Health and Senior Services' Division of Cannabis Regulation and released in mid-October. Its principal investigator is Gideon Cunningham. The headline findings are favorable to the industry and to the state. Licensed dispensaries capture about 93% of the cannabis spending that consumers reported: of an average $161.81 a month, survey respondents said $149.95 went to licensed stores and their delivery services, with flower making up about half of all spending. Annual dispensary sales rose about 16%, from $1.30 billion in 2023 to $1.51 billion in 2025, while active dispensary licenses rose from 201 to 220. Average sales per store held between about $6.5 million and $6.9 million a year. The study concludes that the market is "effectively meeting demand" and has become "a mature, competitive marketplace," and suggests more licenses may not be needed for now. (S1, S2, S3)

The competition finding rests on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the standard antitrust yardstick, which runs from near zero for a perfectly fragmented market to 10,000 for a monopoly. Missouri's statewide dispensary index hovered around 70 from 2023 through 2025, and every congressional district stayed in the range the study calls unconcentrated. But the consultants computed it store by store. Each licensed facility counts as its own competitor, whoever owns it. (S1)

The report says so plainly. Competition measured using sales data is "conceptually distinct" from competition measured using license ownership, it states, and the analysis looks at sales spread across licensed facilities, "rather than the concentration of operational decision-making power among firms or individuals." License limits shape how many stores exist, the authors add, but do not necessarily affect ownership concentration if one group holds many licenses. (S1)

“They should not be interpreted as evidence regarding the concentration or diversity of market ownership.”

— Missouri Cannabis Market Study, Phase 1 Report, Cannabis Public Policy Consulting, October 2026

That is not an academic distinction in Missouri this year. On April 28, two Missouri manufacturing licensees that sell under the Local Cannabis and VIBE brands filed a class action in Jackson County Circuit Court against Good Day Farm and dozens of affiliated LLCs. The petition alleges that a network of at least 61 dispensaries operating under five brand names, Good Day Farm, CODES, Greenlight, Fresh Karma and 3Fifteen Primo, functions as what it calls the "GDF Cartel," coordinating prices, product supply and retail operations. With 224 dispensaries authorized, the plaintiffs argue, no more than 22 may be under "substantially common control, ownership or management." The petition quotes a 2025 Good Day Farm letter to investors predicting that further acquisitions "may lead other retailers in the state to consider selling as fear sets in with our soon to be even more dominant position." (S6, S7)

In May, Damon Frost Jr., a Kansas City general contractor, filed a second class action in the same court on behalf of consumers who bought recreational cannabis from the defendants, alleging the arrangement "limited choice and locked out third party brands" and raised prices. Good Day Farm has denied all of it. A statement provided to the Missouri Independent by Lisa Weser on the company's behalf called the claims "baseless and without merit" and said the company "operates in full compliance with all applicable Missouri state laws and regulations." None of the allegations has been proven in court. (S6, S8)

The legal fight turns on a few words that changed in 2022. Missouri's medical marijuana amendment barred the state from issuing more than five dispensary licenses to any entity under "substantially common control, ownership, or management." The adult-use amendment voters approved in November 2022 instead says no one may own more than 10% of the licenses in a category, and defines an owner as someone with a 10% financial or voting interest. The common-control language did not carry over. Good Day Farm was the leading donor to the legalization campaign, and its attorneys sat on the advisory team that drafted the amendment, the Missouri Independent reported. (S1, S6, S7)

The state's paperwork followed the text. Lisa Cox, a spokeswoman for the health department, confirmed to the Independent that the division "discontinued collection" of the common-control affidavits licensees once signed, when the constitution was amended. "The law and rules do not require analysis for substantially common control or management with comprehensive licenses," Cox said. The only exception is testing labs. (S8)

Amy Moore, the division's director, acknowledged the gap after the study came out. "While this study did not include all factors related to market evaluations, such as ownership data," she said in a statement, "DCR intends to include this information as recommended by CPPC in future studies to assist with more comprehensive market monitoring." The study's first policy recommendation is exactly that: build a de-identified database linking licenses to common ownership groups so future concentration analyses can be run by owner, not just by store. (S1, S2)

There are limits on how public that picture will be. Ownership information is collected through licensing, the consultants wrote, but it is "complex and subject to legal and confidentiality considerations that may limit external use." The division has proposed rules that would require every licensee to report its ownership percentages once a year, and that would let regulators fine a business up to $100,000, or suspend or revoke its license, when someone with a history of specified violations exercises a controlling influence over it. Cox said those annual reports would be subject to the same confidentiality analysis as any other licensee filing. (S2, S5)

The study's defenders have a strong case on the numbers it did measure. A market where licensed stores take about 93% of spending, where sales per store held steady as 19 more opened, and where no region is dominated by a handful of facilities is not the picture of a cartel squeezing consumers, and the report notes that ownership concentration alone does not necessarily mean competition is limited. The survey behind the demand figures is substantial: 1,200 Missouri adults who had used cannabis in the previous 30 days, interviewed from March 16 to April 3, 2026, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 points. (S1, S2)

But the consultants also told the state to stop allocating dispensary licenses by population and congressional district and let demand guide where new stores go, while acknowledging that would mean changing the constitution. Their fallback options include keeping the current structure or adding licenses in districts where more competition might help consumers. The constitution already requires at least 24 dispensary licenses in each of the state's eight congressional districts, and the state expects to issue 144 microbusiness licenses in all. Any of those choices looks different if, as the lawsuits allege, more than a quarter of the existing stores answer to one company, and the study could not say whether they do. A broader Phase 2 economic study is due in November. (S1, S3)

Schlesinger's metaphor has outlived his trial. Missouri now has an official study that counts every car on the road and checks which ones are registered. It does not yet know who holds the keys, and the state's plan for finding out may keep the answer between regulators and the companies that file it. (S1, S5)

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