Missouri investigates unregulated hemp shops, including 1 in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has launched investigations into five retailers selling intoxicating hemp and cannabinoid products in the state, her office announced Monday.

The probe escalates scrutiny of a gray-market industry that has surged in Missouri and comes just weeks after President Donald Trump signed a law that will ban most hemp-derived THC products nationwide.

“We will not allow Missouri consumers to be treated as test subjects for unregulated chemical experiments,” Hanaway said in a release. “If a business chooses to profit by selling powerful intoxicants while hiding what’s actually in them, my office will step in.”

The targeted businesses are Swin Dispensaries and Puffer’s Choice, which operate stores in southwest Missouri; Vaporized and Moonlight Smoke Shop, which are in the St. Louis area; and Sacred Leaf, which has stores in KC’s Westport area and Independence.

Hanaway’s office issued civil investigative demands — legal tools similar to subpoenas — seeking detailed information on sourcing, manufacturing, testing, and marketing for products containing Delta-8, Delta-10, THC-A, THC-P, HHC, and other chemically altered cannabinoids.

“None of these intoxicating cannabinoid products are approved by the FDA for any medical use,” Hanaway said.

Emmitt Monslow, a franchisee who runs both Kansas City-area Sacred Leaf locations, told The Star on Tuesday that his company will comply with all requests from the attorney general’s office. But Monslow expressed frustration that he had been swept into the state’s crackdown, given that he has been an advocate for increased regulation in the hemp industry.

“It feels like we’re being targeted because we’ve been vocal about fighting for that cause,” he said. “We’re trying to get the bad actors out of the industry, and now we’re the good guys who’ve been left holding the bag.”

None of the other four retailers under investigation responded to requests for comment Tuesday.

An unregulated Missouri hemp boom

Missouri’s cannabis landscape has grown increasingly blurry in recent years. Alongside the licensed dispensaries regulated and taxed by the state, a parallel market of unlicensed and unregulated hemp shops has sprung up — many of them storefronts that look, to casual consumers, nearly identical to state-licensed cannabis retailers.

These shops sell THCa and other hemp-derived intoxicants by relying on a federal loophole that defines hemp solely by its Delta-9 THC content in its raw, unheated form. THCa itself is a non-intoxicating precursor that becomes psychoactive only when heated — a technicality that unlicensed retailers say keeps their products legal and has allowed them to operate openly despite widespread confusion.

That loophole was effectively closed last month, when Trump signed new federal legislation banning most hemp products that contain intoxicating levels of THC, including THCa. The new law, signed on Nov. 12, goes into effect a year from that date, in November 2026.

The Missouri Hemp Trade Association, which represents unlicensed retailers, has said it is drafting legislation to create a statewide regulatory framework for hemp shops that would allow shops like Sacred Leaf to continue selling THCa and other products. The group plans to introduce the proposal when the legislative session begins in January, even though the new federal law would nullify any state regulations enacted in Missouri once it goes into effect in a year. Hemp advocates hope a push in Washington to amend the federal law combined with state regulation could allow Missouri retailers of intoxicating hemp to stay open.

“We have 365 days — this isn’t definite,” Brooklyn Hill, the association’s president, recently told The Star. “We have an opportunity to really pass something in the Missouri legislature this year that is going to regulate our industry instead of eradicate our industry.”

That scramble for regulatory clarity will unfold alongside mounting pressure on hemp retailers in Jackson County court. There, a coalition of dispensaries recently sued Sacred Leaf and other Kansas City-area gray-market shops, claiming the retailers are skirting Missouri’s cannabis laws and undermining the regulated market.

“Licensed dispensaries are following Missouri’s rules and regulations — they’re paying taxes, paying licensing fees, testing their products, age-gating,” Chris McHugh, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Star. “Meanwhile, these totally unlicensed Temu versions of dispensaries are making millions by … selling the same stuff and not having to abide by any of the rules.”

McHugh told The Star the licensed dispensaries are seeking damages in the “tens of millions of dollars.”

Monslow said his Sacred Leaf locations maintain COAs (certificates of analysis that verify lab testing and cannabinoid levels), clear labeling and batch tracking — measures designed to demonstrate transparency and accountability to customers. He says the real threat to public safety is a tier below operations like his: foreign-sourced operators selling untested products out of convenience stores and gas stations.

“There’s a black market of cheap, often Chinese-owned operations that don’t do COAs, don’t do lab testing, and they’re trying to leach onto our industry, which is young and thriving and has a lot of growth,” Monslow said. “It’s that 10% of bad actors that are destroying things for everybody else. That’s who the state should be targeting, not us.”

Hanaway encouraged Missourians who believe they were misled or harmed by intoxicating cannabinoid products to file a complaint at ago.mo.gov.