Alderman wants a smoke shop crackdown in St. Louis

St. Louis Alderman Tom Oldenburg is hoping to crack down on smoke shops that sell everything from regular old tobacco to a slew of products that are very similar to, but not quite, marijuana. He says that in many cases these shops operate with little to no regulation, and he wants to focus the Board of Aldermen’s attention on changing that, starting as soon as today.

“These things, if not operated correctly, really are just a detriment to the quality of life in neighborhoods,” Oldenburg tells SLM. “It should be an extreme privilege to sell that stuff in the city, and it should be hard to open up, because we’ve seen the track record of what happens here.”

He says he is planning a bill that would include basic regulations on the hours these stores could operate, as well as what sort of signage they could use. His legislation could also potentially allow for a plat and petition process, requiring buy-in from neighbors before a new smoke shop can open. These regulations would give the city a way to force compliance. If a shop violated conditions (for example, by selling illegal THC products), the city could revoke its occupancy permit more easily. “If we could put conditions, then it’s like, ‘Alright, you’re in violation—boom, your occupancy permit is withdrawn.’”

In some cases, the city already is cracking down on smoke shops that run afoul of their neighbors. 

In July, the police raided Exotic Smokes on Hampton Avenue in St. Louis Hills after reports of the shop selling THC products, which are only legal at licensed dispensaries, and advertising itself via a sandwich board out front reading FREE WEED. It also operated 24 hours a day. Asked if the material collected in the raid had been tested in a drug lab, a police spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing. The business owners, both in their early 20s, appealed the closure, but earlier this month the St. Louis Board of Building Appeals shot down the appeal.

Prior to that, the city shut down the Furr Smoke Shop in Benton Park West in 2024 after residents complained it was selling either marijauna, or something that smelled exactly like it, at all hours of the night. It was able to reopen with a permit to sell tobacco and vapes. A recent trip to the store found it selling THCA, a cannabis compound that, though not technically marijuana, will in many cases get you higher than the real deal—or at least that’s what the man working behind the counter told a reporter.

Oldenburg’s motivation for his legislation is for the city to not have to spend so much energy shutting down bad actors by forcing them to deal with more regulation on the front end.

“It’s so easy to just slip in illegal products. This is a gray area. This shit is moving all the time—THC levels, is it a hemp-derived product? Is it not right? Is it cannabis-derived? All of it is very hard,” Oldenburg says of the cannabis-adjacent  products often sold in such stores. “So my point is, let’s just make these stores really hard to open on the front end.”

He says that “ideally” he’d like to see a plat and petition process that would require new smoke shops to get approval from a certain percentage of neighbors before opening. For a long time, that was a requirement for new bars and restaurants getting liquor licenses. Last year, however, the city enacted a new way to get a liquor license without all the signatures. Critics said the old process was onerous and led to long wait times for businesses to get licensed.

Given that the city just stepped back from the plat and petition requirement for liquor licenses, the idea of implementing a new one for smoke shops may face an uphill battle. But even if that’s the case, Oldenburg says that the city could still give itself more oversight of smoke shops by closing a loophole in the city zoning code that allows businesses of less than 3,000 square feet to operate as “general retail” with almost no regulatory framework other than an occupancy permit. “There’s no strings attached. You can do what you want,” he says. “No one seems concerned about that. Well, myself and some of my colleagues are concerned about it.”

Oldenburg is hoping to file his bill as soon as this morning. When he spoke to SLM last week, he said he was still trying to figure out exactly what products a store would have to sell to be defined as a smoke shop. “Whether it’s THC or hemp-infused or the chemical is above .03, I don’t really care,” he said. “I think in general, smoke shops should go under scrutiny and be very limited and rare in our city.”