ST. LOUIS – Recreational marijuana sales will start statewide as soon as Friday. The state of Missouri originally set the date for Monday, but announced a last-minute change on Thursday.

Dispensaries said there is a lot of work ahead of Friday’s early launch.

“We understand they are going to issue the comprehensive licenses that will let us sell adult-use products,” said Jason Nelson, CEO of BeLeaf Medical. “Then they’re some administrative stuff we have to do through the state’s traceability system to make sure it’s ready to accept adult use purchases as well.”

He said the state’s decision to push up the launch date was a surprise that businesses were not expecting, and dispensaries are still waiting for licenses to sell for recreational use.

“At that point, once we have that certainty, we can then signal to the public that tomorrow afternoon could launch adult-use sales,” Nelson said. “For all intensive purposes, we do believe Saturday morning at 9 a.m. will be a very strong launch for us even if, for some reason tomorrow, administratively, it doesn’t come to fruition.”

Dispensaries aren’t the only ones preparing recreational marijuana for adult use; cities are making changes too, even ones that don’t currently have any marijuana stores.

“We are considering revising our land use and zoning regulations to be consistent with the state constitution with the passing of Amendment 3 that happened in November,” said Jonathan Raiche with the City of Kirkwood.

The new law is bringing a lot of changes, and everyone is working to be prepared. Make sure to check dispensary websites for the latest updates.

“We don’t want customers just showing up tomorrow under some new headlines that you’ve seen that say it does launch tomorrow, or it will launch tomorrow,” Nelson said. “It’s still not a certainty in that outcome, as much as we would like to predict that there is.”