ST PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota lawmakers are debating changes to the state's recreational cannabis law, with an eye toward helping new businesses gear up for 2025.
That's when the state's Office of Cannabis Management will start issuing licenses to retailers and others business categories in the legal marijuana industry.
"I have often said that we are 100 years post prohibition on liquor, and we are still making changes to the state’s liquor laws," Rep. Zack Stephenson told the House Commerce Committee Wednesday. "People should expect changes to the state’s cannabis laws."
Rep. Stephenson, a Coon Rapids Democrat, was the lead author of the 2023 legislation that legalized cannabis. He's also carrying this year's Cannabis Policy Bill, which updates the original law.
The legislation creates a pre-approval process for companies that gain licenses from the state to help them prepare for the beginning of legal sales of retail smokable cannabis products in 2025. It also sets statewide caps on the numbers of licenses, in hopes of avoiding the free-for-all scenario that has unfolded in other states that legalized the drug.
The most recent version of the bill, which passed the Commerce Committee, calls for the following limits on licenses:
- Microbusiness licenses: 100
- Mezzobusiness licenses: 11
- Cultivator licenses: 13
- Manufacturer licenses: 6
- Retailer licenses: 50
- Wholesaler licenses: 20
- Transporter licenses: 20
- Testing facility licenses: 25
- Cannabis event organizer licenses: 10
- Cannabis delivery service licenses: 10
If there are too many equally qualified applicants chasing the same licenses, the OCM will grant the licenses based on a lottery system.
"The existing law has a lottery in it. People should know that and understand that," Stephenson said.
"It has a point-based system, but in the event there are multiple applicants who have the same number of points and there are more people at that stage than licenses they can issue, the way the agency’s supposed to decide who to give license to is by lottery."
Charlene Briner, the OCM's interim director, said that the minimum standards to qualify for a license won't change as a result of the lottery system. Stephenson's bill makes it clear that a lottery system will be used if there are more applicants than licenses.
"We do not propose removing any of the rigorous requirements for license applicants that are already included in law," Briner told the committee.
"We also want to make sure we’re including additional protections against some of the concerns we’ve heard about flooding the zone, or multiple applicants, or some of the advantage larger multi-state operators that any applicant may use to try to gain the advantage in the system."
Last year's legislation called for adding to an applicant's points to achieve social equity, to acknowledge the historic, disproportionate impact of the marijuana prohibition.
"We are looking at a lottery system for both social equity applicants and for general applicants, and we are looking at a well-qualified, or well-vetted lottery that includes the merit-based components that already exist in Chapter 342."
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