Medical marijuana testing facilities approved; none in SEMO

Missouri's Department of Health and Senior Services has approved license applications for 10 medical marijuana testing facilities, including three in the St. Louis metropolitan area but none in Southeast Missouri.

DHSS approved the applications Thursday from among 17 submitted earlier this year from various labs and chemical testing companies that had expressed an interest in testing medical-grade cannabis under the state's new medical marijuana laws.

Testing facilities will be responsible for verifying levels of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol)in medical marijuana products as well as screening it for any foreign matter or dangerous bacteria.

Among the applications not approved Thursday was the one submitted by Megatron Labs LLC of Malden, Missouri. Megatron's was the only testing facility application submitted from Southeast Missouri.

The St. Louis-area applications that were approved were from EKG Life Science Solutions LLC and Cloud TEN LLC, both of St. Louis, and from GCA Inc. in Herculaneum in Jefferson County, Missouri. The other applications approved by DHSS originated in Springfield, Platte City, Fayette, Chillicothe, Kingdom City, Galena and Moscow Mills, northwest of St. Louis.

Facilities whose applications were designated as "approved" were given five days to confirm acceptance of their certification by DHSS.

According to DHSS, applications "denied" were not approved for "several reasons, including failure to meet minimum qualification, the results of an analysis for substantial common control, the results of application scoring or application withdrawal.

Missouri's medical marijuana guidelines requires DHSS to license "at least two" testing facilities, but the agency decided earlier this year to increase that number to 10.

"Because laboratory facilities will be required to work hand-in-hand with our other licensed facilities and they play an important role in the safety of this program, we opted to license 10 of these facilities to ensure Missouri patients have access to the best medical marijuana products available," according to Lyndall Fraker, director of the DHSS Section for Medical Marijuana Regulation.

DHSS is expected to approve additional license applications related to medical marijuana in the near future including applications for product dispensaries, cultivators, manufacturers and transporters.