Hemp Industry Sues to Block Missouri THC Product Ban

A coalition of hemp businesses is asking a federal court to strike down Missouri’s incoming ban on intoxicating hemp products, arguing the law is less a consumer-safety measure than a forced handoff of the state’s hemp market to its licensed marijuana operators. The ban is set to take effect November 12, 2026, and would pull THC seltzers, edibles, and other hemp-derived products from smoke shops, bars, and grocery stores across the state.

The suit was filed on July 16, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri by the Missouri Hemp Trade Association; St. Louis-based MNG 2005, the parent company of 55 CBD Kratom stores nationwide; and Wisconsin’s Lifted Liquids. It names Gov. Mike Kehoe, Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, and Sarah Willson, who directs the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and oversees the state’s marijuana program.

How the ban works

House Bill 2641, which Kehoe signed on April 23, 2026, rewrites state law so that hemp-derived cannabinoid products are treated as marijuana under Missouri’s voter-approved cannabis program. That single move is what the industry says turns a safety rule into a market grab. Missouri’s constitution requires anything sold as marijuana to be grown, processed, tested, and sold through state-licensed facilities, and because most hemp is cultivated out of state, folding hemp into that definition effectively removes the products from every retailer that isn’t a licensed dispensary.

The law caps individual products at 0.4 milligrams of THC per container and largely mirrors a federal ban Congress approved in late 2025 that also takes effect November 12. Missouri built in contingencies. If Congress reverses course and keeps the products legal, the state would allow them only inside licensed dispensaries; if Congress merely delays its ban, Missouri would still bar everything except intoxicating beverages.

That structure is the heart of the plaintiffs’ complaint. Missouri voters wrote the state’s marijuana program into the constitution in 2022, creating a closed system of licensed cultivators and dispensaries that is still working through its own growing pains, from delayed record expungements to license disputes. The hemp coalition argues the new law hands that same closed system a captive market it never had to compete for.

The vagueness claim

The coalition’s central legal argument is that the law is unconstitutionally vague. It says the measure defines the same products as both “hemp” and “marijuana” in different provisions, leaving businesses, police, and prosecutors unable to tell what is actually legal — a problem with real stakes, because selling marijuana without a license is a crime in Missouri. The plaintiffs also argue the law restricts who can move hemp through the state even as it promises not to disturb interstate commerce, and that its effective-date provisions are written so confusingly that companies cannot tell which products are covered or when. They warn the definitions are broad enough to sweep non-intoxicating CBD off shelves as well.

“This isn’t consumer protection,” said Jay Patel, president of the Missouri Hemp Trade Association. “It’s the elimination of an entire legal industry coupled with a government-mandated monopoly.”

A crackdown already underway

The lawsuit lands after months of enforcement pressure. Hanaway has targeted intoxicating hemp retailers since taking office in September 2025, using state consumer-protection laws to push products off shelves, and the state has argued that unregulated, unlabeled THC products have sent children to hospitals. Industry groups counter that Missouri already had narrower tools available — age limits, potency caps, labeling standards, and packaging rules — and that lawmakers reached past them to a wholesale ban.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dave Hinman, an O’Fallon Republican, dismissed the challenge as a “last ditch effort” and predicted it would fail, saying the law simply gives state police and prosecutors the authority to help enforce the coming federal ban.

Missouri is now the latest state where hemp operators have turned to federal court as the November deadline approaches. Hawaii retailers sued to block their state’s product crackdown, and Texas businesses have been whipsawed by an on-again, off-again smokable-hemp ban. The White House, meanwhile, has pressed Congress to call off the federal ban that Missouri’s law was built to track. For Missouri’s hemp sellers, the immediate question is timing: whether a judge acts on their request before the products come off the shelves on November 12.