St. Louis County, MO Business Licensing & Operations: Tobacco Retail License (2026)

St. 360 to include cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, snuff, snus, e-cigarettes, vape pens, e-hookahs and their components and liquids. 350 the rule applies countywide except inside cities of 75,000 or more residents that run their own organized health department, so most of the larger incorporated municipalities ringing unincorporated St. Louis County are outside this chapter. 361 requires a license from the County Department of Public Health before any retail sale, with a separate license needed for every retail establishment and every vending machine. The retail tobacco license runs $125 a year per storefront and $25 per vending machine; a stand-alone electronic smoking device retail license is $25 a year.

Licenses expire June 30 each year, and renewal applications are due by May 1. New tobacco licenses cannot issue within 1,000 feet of school property, measured property-line to property-line, though existing license holders at that address and locations licensed there within the prior 24 months are grandfathered. The Department must act on a complete application within 30 days. 362 lets the Director suspend a non-school-zone license for 30 business days on a second violation within three years, 120 days on a third, and revoke it on a fourth; a license within 1,000 feet of a school instead faces a 30-day suspension on the first violation and revocation on the second. 368 bans selling single cigarettes.