Medical marijuana dispensaries and growing farms could begin popping up along Missouri's southern border.

Officials with the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission last week finalized details and applications for prospective growers and vendors will become available to the public on June 20.

Under Arkansas law, there can be five cultivation sites statewide; for dispensaries, the state is divided into eight zones that each can have at least four dispensaries, for a total of 32 statewide.

Northwest Arkansas — Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties — is defined as one zone.

Each of those four counties voted to approve medical marijuana in November, as did the state overall, by a vote of 53 percent to 46 percent.

Signatures are being gathered to try and ask Missourians if medical and recreational marijuana should be legalized, regardless of age. Steve Leck of Springfield wants to get the issue on the November 2018 ballot. It also aims to allow people to drive under the influence of marijuana.

Efforts underway to legalize medical and recreational marijuana in Missouri

“We believe that it should be treated no differently than alcohol in terms of any adult should be able to consume whatever they want as long as they are not affecting anybody else or harming anyone else,” says Leck.

A group of Missouri veterans will head to Colorado on Thursday for a conference dealing with medical marijuana and how it can help treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

The "1st Annual Institute of Cannabis Research Conference” will be held at Colorado State University and feature tours of legal dispensaries and grow operations.

Vietnam veteran George Biswell will be one of 22 Missouri veterans traveling to the conference. Biswell will be one of 22 Missouri veterans traveling to the conference.

"I think just about anybody who served in Vietnam deals with some form of post-traumatic stress," he told 41 Action News.

Biswell served in the United States Air Force and was sent overseas to help in the Vietnam War in 1969.

Missouri deems marijuana possession a crime that carries hundreds of dollars in fines and a potential jail term. But residents of Kansas City voted overwhelmingly to reduce the penalties there, becoming the latest city in the state to relax punishments for people caught with small amounts of pot.

Nearly 75 percent of voters approved the ballot initiative, Question 5, in Tuesday's special election. The pot measure was considered alongside infrastructure issues and candidates for school district posts.

From member station KCUR reporter Lisa Rodriguez:

Lawmakers in about two dozen states have proposed bills this year to ease their marijuana laws despite Attorney General Jeff Sessions' warning that he could crack down on pot, a major change from the Obama administration, which essentially turned a blind eye to the state legislation.

Bills have been introduced in 17 states this year to make recreational pot legal for adults, while five others are considering voter referendums on the issue. Sixteen states have introduced medical marijuana legislation, 10 are considering decriminalizing the drug and three are considering easing their penalties. An effort in Wyoming to decriminalize the drug failed this session.

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the medical cannabis patient advocacy group, recently released its annual report assigning letter grades to states based on the proficiency of their medical cannabis programs. The good news: 39 states improved their medical cannabis laws last year. The bad news: Six states have yet to legalize any form of medical cannabis, including CBD products, and many others still struggle with restrictive laws, limited access or daunting prices.