Minnesota marijuana regulators have more than 3,500 business license applications to sift through in coming months, including up to 2,100 potentially for dispensary operators and another 2,000 possible growers.
According to The Minnesota Star Tribune, the state’s Office of Cannabis Management received 1,444 social equity cannabis license submissions during its initial application window last year, along with another 2,058 non-equity applications for business permits from a more recent window that just closed this month.
To date, the state has struggled with how to move forward on licensing, after lawsuits last year derailed what had been intended to be a social equity license lottery for qualified applicants.
The OCM decided it will not cap licenses for some permit categories – including microbusinesses, wholesalers, delivery services and medical marijuana combination companies – while two new license lotteries are scheduled for May and June for business permits that are capped by law, which include dispensaries, manufacturers and cultivators. The first lottery will award social equity retail permit winners, and the second will choose from general non-equity applicants.
About half of the applications submitted overall to the OCM are for microbusiness permits, which allow for small-scale vertical integration, The Star Tribune reported, while the agency received only 96 applications for 50 full-scale grow permits and another 83 for the 24 available manufacturing licenses.
“A lot of people, including a lot of my clients, pivoted to the microbusiness license because it’s uncapped,” cannabis attorney Jason Tarasek told The Star Tribune. “I think some of those people in the lottery now have better odds than I was anticipating a couple weeks ago.”
That, Tarasek speculated, could lead to a surplus of retailers in the Minnesota market, since many of those applicants are more interested in starting their own storefronts than they are in growing or manufacturing. And many of those will wind up opening in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, which could easily become oversaturated with dispensaries.
Regulators are also still finalizing industry rules, which include a controversial potency cap of 80% THC for cannabis concentrates, The Star Tribune noted. The recreational market has technically already begun with sales by several Native American tribes in the state.
Now, however, other stakeholders have more belief that the full adult-use market will get off the ground this coming year, after some false starts in 2024.
“It appears that we actually will have a market launch in 2025,” Varasek said.
[[{“value”:”Lotteries for capped license categories will be held in May and June.
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