MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota is still on track to launch its legal recreational cannabis market next year, the regulator’s top official said: despite the concerns of some potential companies that the process is too slow.
“I know people are impatient. I know they are excited to get started. But I can reassure them that we are working to meet the needs of operators, consumers and medical patients,” said Charlene Briner, interim director of the young Office of Cannabis Management. “They have to trust the people who do the work in this office.”
Briner said the agency, which was created under the 2023 law greenlighting legal marijuana, is exceeding expectations because regulators are “building the plane as we fly.”
The agency has an initial set of draft rules, which provide more clarity on how businesses should operate, and a second version is awaiting publication and further feedback before being finalized. Briner expects it to be ready in the first quarter of next year.
Once these rules are established, businesses can operate. But the agency has started issuing the first one “pre-approved” licenses to give people a head start in planning and for growers the opportunity to plant, so that there is a supply of cannabis flowers when they are introduced to the market. Social equity applicants are eligible and 1,800 of them have submitted paperwork to secure one of 280 early licenses available – from cultivation to retail and more.
After each application is vetted, it is moved to a lottery from which the office will randomly select who will receive a license.
The fact that the lottery has not yet taken place frustrates some potential companies eager to get started. The Office of Cannabis Management initially said by fall.
Briner emphasizes that the agency is not behind schedule, but is instead taking the necessary time to thoroughly review each application to ensure that none are in violation of the law. She said it is a complicated and technical process and her office recently notified more than 360 applicants that they need additional documents for further clarification.
“We’re also in the process of reviewing to make sure we can identify on the front end any predatory practices within those ownership structures,” Briner said. “What we heard a lot about during the legislative session were concerns about applicants who might try to come in under the guise of a social justice applicant with an unfair ownership arrangement, or about applicants who might try to enter the zone, so to speak, to inundate them with multiple applications to try to increase their chances of making it through the lottery.”
She pointed to other states that have addressed this problem, including Missouri. Cannabis regulators there recently denied certification of some licenses and had previously warned about operators using predatory practices to game the system designed to favor social equity applicants, according to local news outlet Missouri Independent.
“We are assessing all those things, and that takes some time. We are working, I would say, at a pace that is even exceeding expectations,” she added.
The application period for the pre-approved permits expired in mid-August. But some of those who applied told WCCO they had not received notice of the status of their application or any indication of when the lottery to randomly choose licensees would take place.
Briner maintains the agency is still on track, though she did not provide a specific date for when the first permits would be issued other than by the end of this year.
She pointed to similar programs in other states, such as Maryland, that received a similar number of applications and took 90 days to review the applications.
“I also want to remind people that this is the first time we’re doing this – this is the first round of licensing,” she said. “So we want to make sure that our processes are clear, that we don’t make mistakes and that we don’t give people who shouldn’t be in the lottery that opportunity or give people false hope about how this process works.”
She said she is confident that by 2025, businesses in every part of the supply chain – from growers, to wholesalers and retailers – will be up and running.
Caroline Cummings
