Staying on the straight and narrow

I have a legal background and out of interest looked up my state statute yesterday. I was surprised to find an ingredients statute.
Missouri Revised Statutes (Yes, being AB's home may have something to do with this)
Section 311.490 (in part)

Ingredients of beer--intoxicating malt liquor.
311.490. No person, partnership or corporation engaged in the brewing, manufacture or sale of beer as defined, in this chapter, or other intoxicating malt liquor, shall use in the manufacture or brewing thereof, or shall sell any such beer or other intoxicating malt liquor which contains ingredients not in compliance with the following standards:

(1) Beer shall be brewed from malt or a malt substitute, which only includes rice, grain of any kind, bean, glucose, sugar, and molasses. Honey, fruit, fruit juices, fruit concentrate, herbs, spices, and other food materials may be used as adjuncts in fermenting beer;

(2) Flavor and other nonbeverage ingredients containing alcohol may be used in producing beer, but may contribute to no more than forty-nine percent of the overall alcohol content of the finished beer. In the case of beer with an alcohol content of more than six percent by volume, no more than one and one-half percent of the volume of the beer may consist of alcohol derived from added flavors and other nonbeverage ingredients containing alcohol...

Guessing that hard cider was a bad idea! Crazy stuff. Anyway are stats like this common in other states? I know of the German law, but would have never guessed one existed in MO.

Seems like this law doesn't really exclude anything the average homebrewer would use. I'm guessing they are trying to head off things like using narcotics in beers.

why is your hard cider a bad idea? Those laws pertain to malt liquor, and there ain't no malt in cider. Cider is more like a sparking wine.

A close enough reading of the statute (which I'm not really disposed to do) may reveal special interests at work in favoring one sort of thing over another (something I wouldn't be surprised at in MO, being the home of large brewing interests). Federal law and the law codes of every state are full of statutes that were actually written by the brewing / distilling (or agricultural, steel, manufacturing, mining, oil, pharmaceutical, labor union.....fill in your own blank) interests and handed to legislators who, after suitable contributions to their political careers, obligingly introduced them into Congress or the legislature and lobbied enthusiastically for their passage, often without even a cursory reading.

I though laws like this were to govern "malternative" beverages. So the Smirnoff Ice and prepackaged Jack and Cokes are actually flavorless beers that are blended with flavoring instead of spirits with mixers. It was to get around the high spirit tax, and just get taxed at the beer rates?

It won't stop me from making the 20 or so gallons a year. I was thinking of using some DME instead of sugar to up the OG and give more body and a sweet/semi-dry finish per some posts I have read here. Appears that would land me within the letter of the law, but probably not the original intent as rhoadsrage indicated.

seems like you would be fine

I don't see how hard cider could be illegal by reading that. It states that you can use fruit juices as part of a malt beverage. I just wouldn't add liquor to your finished product, specifically do not let it be more than 49% of the total.