Retail recreational marijuana, take two. Cannabis management leader speaks to rollout
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It's take two for a key step in Minnesota's legal recreational marijuana enterprise.
On Tuesday, the Office of Cannabis Management started accepting applications for licenses to grow and sell marijuana — for a second time.
Lawsuits last fall led to the cancellation of a planned lottery then geared toward a smaller set of business applicants. Starting now, both social equity and general applicants can throw their hats in the ring for back-to-back lotteries sometime around May or June.
“So the preapproval process that happened over the fall was designed to give social equity applicants a runway to the market, to get a bit of a head start to establish themselves, find capital, find the physical locations for businesses,” Eric Taubel, OCM’s interim director told Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer Tuesday. “This round, we're sort of bringing everyone in all at once. There's there's a place for everybody in our market.”
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Ranging from growers and cultivators to retail and delivery drivers, 10 license types will be available this time; four types will be awarded through a lottery and six through a competitive application process. In the first round, every single license was subject to a lottery.
“So if you're interested in a micro business or a wholesale business, transportation, delivery service or testing facility, and you meet the minimum qualifications, you'll be a qualified applicant on your way to licensure,” Taubel said.
For this second round, OCM will have more time to review applications, and people who think their application was erroneously denied can appeal, he explained.
According to Taubel, Native American tribes will be the first to open off-reservation retail recreational marijuana sales in Minnesota as months-long compact negotiations between state and tribal governments wrap up.
“We do anticipate that some of those agreements are coming pretty close to final,” Taubel said. “So we anticipate some of those early moving tribes will likely be setting up their shop sooner rather than later.”
Some reservations already operate cannabis retail locations but only on tribal lands.
The Minnesota Legislature legalized recreational cannabis in 2023 with the intention that it be available this year. The agency says it's on track to meet that goal, despite Gov. Tim Walz and other legislators originally predicting the market would be up and running in early 2025.
Taubel said Minnesota’s limited medical marijuana marketplace is one of the reasons for the slight lag.
“Other states that have legalized for adult use often have pretty substantial cannabis infrastructure. They have, you know, 10s, 20s, hundreds of licensees who are growing cannabis and selling cannabis. Minnesota only had two registered medical cannabis providers with just 16 retail locations. So we've always known it's going to be a slow build to a full market,” Taubel said.
Taubel, a lawyer, became interim director of OCM last month, taking over from Walz-appointed Interim Director Charlene Briner. He’s previously served as general counsel for the state education department. Briner’s projected 3-4 month tenure into a year-and-a-half before she decided to leave the position that now oversees more than 100 employees.
“Unlike my predecessor, I actively chose to come to the Office of Cannabis Management… and was excited about this opportunity to build something from the ground up and launch a new market that had a chance to have some pretty long, lasting impacts on the state of Minnesota,” Taubel said. He did not say whether he was interested in taking the helm permanently.