Sisters Juree Burgett and Tanya Knight, both in their 60s, smell various marijuana buds, assessing their options at a trendy dispensary in Missouri. They drove three hours from Kansas — where recreational cannabis use is still illegal — to make their purchase.

“They will not legalize it in Kansas. They won’t give us medical (usage),” says 64-year-old Burgett, clad in a denim jacket.

The shop with a drive-through window is in a rundown part of Kansas City, just off the highway and over the border into Missouri, the largely conservative Midwestern state that is the latest to legalize the recreational use of cannabis.

The new regulation, approved by voters in a referendum in November, has sparked an economic boom for the “Show Me” state, fueled by thousands of pot smokers from the eight states along its borders, most of which have not legalized the drug.

For Burgett, making the long drive is “easier than getting it off the streets.”

She ends up buying chewing gum infused with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, one of the popular edibles in a country where more than half of the 50 states have decriminalized marijuana in some form.