Cass County, MO Cannabis Regulations: Buffer Zones (2026)

261(B)(1) is triggered the first time a marijuana facility applies for zoning or a building permit, whichever comes first, and it only protects schools, day cares and churches that are 'then-existing,' meaning they already hold a building permit, are under construction, or are completed and in use at that moment. For a freestanding facility, the code measures from the external wall of the facility structure closest to the protected use to the closest point of that use's property line. Where the facility sits inside a larger building, such as an office building or a strip mall, the measurement instead runs to the entrance or exit of the protected use closest to the facility.

In every case, the code requires the distance to be measured along the shortest path between the two demarcation points that a person could lawfully travel on foot, not a straight line on a map. 261(A) tie the standard to the Missouri Constitution, Article XIV, incorporating the state's own marijuana facility definitions before laying out the county's siting rules. Cass County Planning and Zoning checks this buffer as part of the zoning and building-permit review for any medical marijuana facility, comprehensive marijuana facility or microbusiness license, and it applies in addition to the separate rules in the same section requiring enclosed operations and residential-building exclusions.