Minnesota recreational marijuana market on target for 2025 launch

Minnesota’s recreational marijuana market is on track to launch in 2025, even as some potential businesses say they’re concerned that the process is taking too long.

The state’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), created under the 2023 law approving adult-use marijuana, has the first draft of the rules, providing more direction about how businesses will be expected to operate, Minneapolis TV station WCCO reported.

The agency is accepting more feedback on the second version of the rules before they’re expected to be finalized by the first quarter of 2025.

Businesses will be able to begin operations after those rules are set.

Shawn Weber, who owns Morgan-based Crested River Cannabis, is eager to start growing.

“Everybody that is either interested or in the industry, we’re in a hurry up-and-wait situation,” Weber told Eden Prairie TV station KMSP.

The head of the OCM is aware “people are impatient.”

“I know they are excited to get started,” Charlene Briner, the OCM’s interim director, told WCCO. “But I would reassure them that we are working to meet the needs of operators and consumers and medical patients.

“They should have confidence in people doing the work in this office.”

Briner said her office has started issuing the first “preapproved” licenses to give businesses time to plan and growers the opportunity to plant so there is a cannabis flower supply before the market launches.

Roughly 1,800 social equity applicants have submitted “pre-applications” in hopes of winning one of the 282 available licenses that will be issued via a lottery.

Briner told WCCO that her office is taking the time it needs to thoroughly review applications to ensure they comply with the law and to identify “any potential predatory practices within those ownership structures.”

Meanwhile, some cities and counties already are establishing guidelines for Minnesota’s impending adult-use market, according to KMSP.