A proposal to allow medical marijuana in Missouri won’t go to voters this year because of an insufficient number of valid signatures, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green’s decision backed those by St. Louis-area election authorities, who threw out thousands of petition signatures; in some cases, people signed sheets labeled for counties in which they weren’t registered to vote.

Proposed constitutional amendments must receive signatures from at least 8 percent of registered voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts in order to go to voters. Secretary of State Jason Kander previously said the measure fell 2,242 signatures short in the 2nd District covering part of the St. Louis area.

The controversial Mystic plant-research site that Monsanto Co. plans to shut down this year has drawn the interest of two groups looking into using the modern facilities for growing medical marijuana, First Selectman Rob Simmons said Monday.

Simmons' revelation came soon after a state website indicated that Monsanto had issued a formal notice of the closure, which will occur in two phases starting Oct. 29. The shutdown, announced last year, will result in the loss of 40 jobs locally, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification dated Aug. 29 and released Monday to The Day by the state Department of Labor.

With interest in topics like “marijuana” and “cannabis” hitting all-time high levels according to Google Trends, nine states in the U.S. will vote on marijuana measures in the world’s most important general election Nov. 8, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.

Voters in California, Florida, Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona, and Arkansas will definitely be casting a ballot to affect cannabis policy in their state. Voters in Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota have submitted signatures to place marijuana proposals on the ballot, while Oklahoma has cleared to circulate a last-minute measure.

A bill signed into law this week by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon will fundamentally change how the state handles convicted criminals seeking to expunge their records and move on with their lives. And that's great news for those carrying burdensome convictions for non-violent drug offenses. 

This is going to be a transformative year for the United States. Not only are we set to vote in a new president for the first time in eight years this November, but we could also see the most rapid expansion of marijuana ever, with eight states now set to vote on recreational or medical cannabis initiatives or amendments this fall.

What's at stake

The expansion of the cannabis industry was initially put in motion 20 years ago when California approved a compassionate use law for medical marijuana. Today, half of all U.S. states have approved a medical marijuana law. The two most recent approvals came from Pennsylvania and Ohio, which used the legislative process to pass medical cannabis laws.

For more than a year, the three entrepreneurs behind Hummingbird Technologies have been working to perfect a device to take the guesswork out of growing plants.

The result of that effort is Nectar, a system that its creators say provides the ideal environment for gardening, albeit on a small scale.

Nectar is 4 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 20 inches long, and can easily fit in a kitchen. It does not require soil or water, but uses a nutrient solution that can be purchased online or in gardening shops. The enclosure is controlled by a smartphone application that allows users to adjust humidity, pH levels, temperature and lighting based on the type of plant being grown.

For the past fifteen years or so, pro-marijuana students attending the University of Missouri-Columbia have printed t-shirts and banners emblazoned with versions of this design, featuring a stylized "tiger claw" made of pot leaves and Mizzou's official "MU" logo. 

Marijuana legalization has been growing like a weed for the past two decades, but 2016 could prove to be its most monumental year yet. Although marijuana has gained 24 state approvals for medicinal use, and four states have legalized its recreational use, we could see up to 12 separate approvals for the currently illicit drug in November.

This expansion is especially important because current President Barack Obama has suggested that the best way to get the attention of Congress is to continue legalizing the drug at the state level. Doing so would eventually force lawmakers to reconsider the federal government's current Schedule 1 stance on the drug.

The Missouri House twice this year killed attempts to legalize medical marijuana.  A measure with the same aim could appear on the November ballot.  It’s backed by a group called New Approach Missouri. 

Spokesman Jack Cardetti says enough signatures were collected, but they must still be reviewed for verification by the Missouri Secretary of State’s office.

One medical marijuana proposal is dead, another could end up on ballot

The Missouri House has rejected a proposal to legalize medical marijuana.

The legislation failed on a 66-87 vote Thursday after lawmakers scaled it back to only permit cancer patients in hospice to use the drug.

The pro-legalization National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said of the 23 states to permit medical cannabis, only Florida’s laws were comparably narrow.

Some supporters of expanding access to marijuana said they could not support such a limited measure. Other opponents said permitting any form of legalized marijuana would lead to higher use among teenagers and, potentially, even looser drugs laws in the future.