ST. PAUL, Minn. (GRAY) – Minnesota legalized cannabis last year, but roughly 17 months after the legislature passed the bill, the state still hasn’t begun to issue licenses to retailers.
The Office of Cannabis Management’s (OCM) interim director Charlene Briner shared that a lot has been happening behind the scenes to get licenses handed out.
“We’re building this plane while we’re flying it,” said Briner.
The OCM was formed when Minnesota legalized recreational cannabis. While in its infancy, the office has also been tasked with overseeing the start of the legal market. Briner said juggling the two has taken a lot of energy.
“We were charged with building an office from the ground up. We are not housed as part of another agency. We don’t have the infrastructure that other agencies have to get started,” said Briner. “We are also charged with launching the new cannabis market, and that means creating a process for the regulations that business operators will have to abide by.”
Eyeing an early 2025 launch, the OCM has been working on setting up the licensing process for retail and cultivation.
This past spring, the state legislature put some new policies in place to speed things up.
“The cannabis market is a supply chain dependent industry, and that means we actually have to cultivate cannabis in order to have products on the retail shelves,” said Briner.
Policies passed in 2024 allowed two main things: pre-approval of licenses for social equity applicants, and early cultivation to prepare for initial demand.
Social equity applicants are defined as individuals who have been harmed by cannabis prohibition in some way.
Briner says when they opened up the social equity pre-approval window, they received nearly 1,800 applicants. Those applicants will, at some point, enter into a “license lottery” of sorts.
“There’s a lot that’s going to be happening in the next couple of months, not the least of which is our lottery for our first pre-approvals,” Briner said.
She added that the process is a methodical one, a process they want to get right the first time.
“One of the cautions that I got all through the legislative session and from people in the industry and outside watching saying, learn from other states what they did well, and emulate those practices and learn from the pitfalls they encountered to try to avoid them,” said Briner.
It seems one of those pitfalls, according to Briner, is not allowing enough in-state cultivation.
“The legislature deliberately made the decision to create space to build this sort of Minnesota made craft industry, and to sort of create space for smaller operators to enter an incredibly challenging and volatile market without the risk of the larger operators,” she said.
Briner says the office is hoping to have the first dispensaries open in the first half of 2025, but several tribal nations have already opened dispensaries of their own, since the state of Minnesota does not have regulatory jurisdiction over the tribes.
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Minnesota legalized cannabis last year, but roughly 17 months after the legislature passed the bill, the state still hasn’t begun to issue licenses to retailers. Read More