Kansas City may create license for marijuana lounges where you could smoke on site

Chris Higgins, The Kansas City Star on Sep 9, 2025

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City could soon allow lounges where marijuana use is allowed on site as the concept continues to emerge in Missouri.

The city has provisions on the books for marijuana dispensaries and sites that cultivate or manufacture marijuana products, but lounges where people can use marijuana products on the premises itself are currently not allowed in Kansas City.

Officials are now working on drafting new rules and licensing regulations that would change that, creating a new type of marijuana business allowed in the city after voters legalized recreational marijuana statewide in 2022.

The City Council would have to approve the new rules and regulations at a later date after the proposal is finalized.

There would be distance requirements from schools, day cares and churches, and a marijuana lounge could not be in the same location as a dispensary or other marijuana business.

Marijuana lounges would be treated similarly to a tavern or a nightclub under city code. A business would have to be either a bar or a marijuana lounge, not both, meaning they could not serve alcohol and also allow weed use.

Councilmember Wes Rogers of the Second District, who is working on passing the new rules through City Council, told The Star that the proposal is targeted at opening up opportunities for local small businesses and minority owners, versus big companies and out-of-state owners, to benefit from legal marijuana.

The city’s planning commission first discussed the proposal at a meeting last week. Commissioners tabled the discussion for more time to get a fuller sense of the city’s proposed new rules and regulations.