Missouri Amendment 3
Amendment 3 was on the ballot in Missouri on November 8, 2022. This proposal legalizes marijuana for any Missouri resident over the age of 21, beginning December 8, 2022.
This site is for informational purposes only. You can find the searchable text of the Amendment, a summary of the Amendment, and educational resources about the Amendment.
Amendment 3 was proposed by Legal Missouri 2022. This ballot initiative is considered a voter initiated petition. The current Missouri Medical Marijuana licensees and their supporters have a trade organization called the MoCann Trade Association. Members of this organization contributed to the initiative proposal. The campaign is managed by John Payne who was also the campaign manager to legalize Medical Marijuana in the state of Missouri. The petition was originally submitted on August 27, 2021 by lawyer, Marc Ellinger and has the filing name of 2022-059.
The State Auditor prepared a Fiscal Note on September 16, 2021 stating that, "State governmental entities estimate initial costs of $3.1 million, initial revenues of at least $7.9 million, annual costs of $5.5 million, and annual revenues of at least $40.8 million. Local governments are estimated to have annual costs of at least $35,000 and annual revenues of at least $13.8 million."
The official ballot language or ballot title was certified by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2021. The ballot language was on the petition that circulated for signatures. A firm from Washington, DC, Fieldworks, managed signature collection. Legal Missouri 2022 paid bonuses per signature gathered near the end of the deadline for submission. The signatures were submitted on May 8th. Petitions were then copied and distributed to local election authorities for signature verification. Counties went through to certify the signatures as valid registered voters. They needed to certify signatures by 5:00 PM on the last Tuesday in July prior to the election. This year, the date was July 26th and initially the counties were not able to certify a sufficient number of signatures. Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft's office used a new electronic resource not available to the counties to conduct an audit of signature sufficiency. On the last possible date, August 9th, the Secretary of State issued a letter of sufficiency that the initiative petition did get enough signatures in 6 of the 8 districts in Missouri which is the minimum requirement to get an initiative on the ballot.
There was a public hearing on September 6, 2022.
Amendment 3 changes the Missouri Constitution Article XIV. It passed at 53.106%.