Lee's Summit, MO Public Conduct: Public Marijuana Use (2026)

Sec. 17-246 flatly bans consuming adult-use marijuana in a 'public place,' a term the ordinance ties directly to the definition used in state marijuana regulations: any public or private property, or portion of it, that is open to the general public, expressly including sidewalks, streets, bridges, parks, schools and businesses. The exceptions are narrow and mirror the definitions used across the chapter's marijuana provisions (Secs. 17-242 through 17-248): a person's own residence, another person's residence where the occupant has consented to the consumption, and any area specifically licensed by the authority with jurisdiction over that licensing or permitting, such as a state-licensed consumption lounge.

Enforcement sits alongside Sec. 17-245's ban on cultivating more than three ounces of visible or unlocked marijuana at a residence and Sec. 17-244's parallel ban on public medical-marijuana consumption, all adopted together by Ordinance No. 9594 in January 2023 to implement Article XIV of the Missouri Constitution at the local level. The penalty for smoking marijuana in public is set in the companion penalties section, Sec. 17-248(C), as a civil infraction rather than a criminal charge, consistent with how Missouri's constitutional marijuana amendment treats low-level violations.