By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
Under legislation approved on Thursday, anyone working in Missouri’s marijuana industry will be required to submit fingerprints for a background check.
Only the owners of cannabis businesses are required by the Missouri Highway Patrol to submit their fingerprints for a criminal history check. Employees are currently subject to a background investigation but not fingerprinted.
The Missouri Senate passed legislation on Thursday with a 32-2 vote. extends the fingerprinting requirements to all employees, contractors, and volunteers in cannabis businesses. The bill also includes some changes to the background checks for schools and child-care facilities.
Now, the bill is headed to the Governor’s desk.
Both the Department of Health and Senior Services, which oversees the cannabis program in the state, and the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association (which represents marijuana professionals and businesses) supported the measure.
A cannabis human-resources specialist told The Independent that fingerprinting could delay the hiring of new cannabis workers, at a time when the state is experiencing a boom in employment.
During the March debate, Holly Thompson Rehder, the bill’s sponsor and senator from the Republican party, said that the fingerprinting requirement was “a federal mandate”
She said, “This brings us into compliance with federal regulations.”
Because marijuana is illegal federally, the federal government does not regulate it in any way. The federal government has given states some guidance in the past.
Washington, D.C. and 22 other states have approved the recreational or adult use of cannabis, while 40 states have legalized its medical use.
Each state has a different approach to background checks.
Employees are not required to undergo fingerprint-based criminal background check in California. Arizona, however, requires all employees, board of directors, owners, and volunteers to undergo fingerprint-based criminal background checks.
John Payne is the founder and managing member at Amendment 2 Consultants. He said that lawmakers refer to the “Cole Memo”, which is the standard for how they approach this process. This was likely also what Rehder meant.
James Cole, then the U.S. Deputy attorney general, issued a memorandum in 2013 to address the growing number of states that legalized medical marijuana. Payne said it was essentially an agreement where the federal government would leave state marijuana programs alone as long as they met certain conditions.
Payne explained that “one of these conditions was to prevent people in organized crime from entering the marijuana business.” It depends on the purpose of the background check, right? “If it’s to check for people with that kind of background, then that would be reasonable.”
Background checks are conducted on anyone who works in the cannabis industry.
The 2018 Missouri constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana was Amendment 2. It required all employees, contractors and owners to undergo a background check based on fingerprints for medical marijuana.
Since December 8, when the constitutional amendment legalizing marijuana for recreational use (Amendment 3) came into effect, DHSS has stopped requiring employees to submit fingerprints in order to obtain an ID badge.
Christy Essex, the owner of Se7en Staffing & Employment Solutions, Missouri’s largest cannabis staffing firm, said that “you have to attest you did not commit disqualifying crimes.” Right now, we can get people hired within 48 hours.
She said that adding the fingerprinting procedure could take up to 14 working days for an employee to be able to start work.
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The constitution says that those with “felony offenses” are not allowed to work in the cannabis industry. However, it does not specify which types of crimes qualify as felonies. The constitution exempts marijuana crimes that can be expunged. The law also states that employees can be exempted from a nonviolent crime if the offense has occurred more than five year ago.
It states that for other felonies “more than five year have passed since a person was released from probation or parole, and they have not been convicted in any subsequent felony criminal offences.”
According to DHSS a large part of their review process is subjective.
In an email sent to The Independent by Lisa Cox, a spokesperson for DHSS in April, she said: “Whatever is written in law is applied to each record. It is a case-bycase analysis, and it can’t be determined simply by a list of potential crimes.”
During hearings in committee, DHSS officials said that the department supports the measure, as it will streamline the process since Amendment 2 requires fingerprinting to be done for medical marijuana, while Amendment 3 doesn’t.
The number of new ID badges approved by the state each month for new employees is a good indicator of Missouri’s employment boom. It’s quadrupled in the last few months.
In November, DHSS approved 264 ID badges. In December, the number of badges approved doubled to over 500.
The process will revert to the original fingerprinting procedure before Amendment 3 came into effect with the signature of the governor.
Essex stated that the biggest challenge that she sees was that there were not enough vendors who took fingerprints for medical marijuana to keep up with the employees, especially in larger cities such as Kansas City and St. Louis. The employees had trouble getting appointments with vendors.
Essex told The Independent that in April “there will be more providers available in Missouri who can handle a large number of candidates if the fingerprinting is implemented again.”
The Missouri Independent first published this story.
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Photo by Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
The article Missouri Bill to Require Fingerprinting of Marijuana Industry Workers Heads to the Governor first appeared on Marijuana Moment.
