The Minnesota Senate last week voted to approve a bill to legalize recreational marijuana, only days after the House of Representatives passed a companion adult-use cannabis legalization measure. The bill, Senate File 73, was approved by the Senate on Friday with a vote of 34-33 that saw all senators from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) voting in favor of the bill and all Republicans opposed.

The bill would legalize the possession and use of cannabis by adults aged 21 and older and establish a regulatory framework for the production and sale of recreational marijuana. Adults would be permitted to purchase up to two ounces of cannabis, 8 grams of cannabis concentrates or edibles with up to 800 milligrams of THC. Home cultivation of marijuana would also be allowed, with adults permitted to grow up to eight cannabis plants at home.

DFL Senator Lindsey Port, the lead sponsor of the bill, said that it is time to change Minnesota’s marijuana policy.

“The prohibition of cannabis is a failed system that has not achieved the desired goals and has had incredible costs for our communities, especially for communities of color,” she said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press.

With the bill, Port said that lawmakers have an “opportunity to undo some of the harm that has been done and create a unique system of regulation that works for Minnesota consumers and businesses, while ensuring an opportunity in this new market for communities that have been most affected by prohibition.”

Port added that the measure was considered carefully by lawmakers, who made several amendments to the legislation as it worked its way through the legislative process.

“Minnesotans are ready. Attitudes are changing,” she told Minnesota Public Radio. “Now is our time to undo decades of ineffective and damaging prohibition.”

After the bill was passed by the state Senate, Democratic Governor Tim Walz said that he would approve the legislation, which would make Minnesota the 23rd state in the nation to end the prohibition of marijuana.

“Legalizing adult-use cannabis and expunging cannabis convictions is good for our economy and the right move for Minnesota,” Walz wrote on Twitter on Friday. “When the bill reaches my desk, I’ll be proud to sign it into law.”

The bill also includes measures to address the harms caused by decades of cannabis prohibition, including a provision to expunge convictions for many marijuana-related offenses. DFL Senator Claire Oumou Verbeten said that the legislation is needed to end the racial disparity repeatedly seen in the enforcement of the nation’s drug laws.

“We owe this to the people who have been impacted the most by this prohibition. It’s our communities of color. It’s Black Minnesotans, especially Black men,” said DFL Senator Claire Oumou Verbeten. “We owe this to them. We can legalize this. We can regulate it. We can expunge,” she said. “Because we have to and because it’s a racial justice issue.”

Minnesota House Also Passes Legalization Bill

Also last week, a companion bill to the Senate measure was passed by the Minnesota House of Representatives, setting the stage for a conference committee to rectify inconsistencies between the two pieces of legislation. After the conference committee resolves differences between the bills, the House and Senate will vote on the final version of the bill. 

Key differences between the separate versions of the legislation include a possession limit of two pounds of cannabis in the House bill, while the Senate version allows adults to possess up to five pounds of marijuana, including no more than two pounds from a source other than home cultivation. The Senate bill allows local governments to cap the number of cannabis retailers. The House bill does not include such limits, although both versions do not allow cities and counties to enact an outright ban on dispensaries. Additionally, the Senate version levies a tax on cannabis products of 10%, while the House version sets the tax rate at 8%.

Both bills establish an Office of Cannabis Management to oversee the licensing and regulation of cannabis companies. Ryan Winkler of the MN is Ready coalition, a group that has advocated for the legislation and assisted in its development, said that there could be “a few bumps in the road” as regulations to enact the legislation are drafted by the new agency.

“As we’ve seen in every other marketplace – and I suspect any market where you’re creating a new product and there’s large consumer demand – it’s difficult to match supply and demand initially and there typically is a market shakeout after the initial exuberance happens,” Winkler said. “We’re seeing that in other states as well. There’s been a lot of consolidation of cannabis companies in other states. So we are anticipating the challenges.”

All 33 Senate Republicans voted against the bill, with senators citing concerns over public safety, substance abuse and controlling the illicit marijuana market. 

“What we’ve come down to after our analysis is this bill simply isn’t enough – not enough public safety, not enough or not enough for public health,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson. “And our local governments are really, really at the bottom of the stick of this.”

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The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) released proposed regulations to govern adult-use cannabis in the state on Thursday, only two days after voters approved a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana.

Missouri voters ended the prohibition on cannabis with the adoption of Constitutional Amendment 3 on November 8, which appeared on the ballot for last week’s midterm elections. More than one million voters decided in favor of the amendment, which received more than 53% of the vote as of Monday morning, with 99% of the vote counted.

The successful amendment to the state’s constitution legalizes the possession, use, sale, and delivery of cannabis for personal use for adults aged 21 and older and sets a 6% tax on commercial cannabis sales. The amendment also includes provisions for the expungement of certain marijuana-related convictions.

Only two days after voters went to the polls, the DHSS released its draft adult-use cannabis regulations and opened up a public comment period to receive feedback on the proposal from interested parties. The public comment period is scheduled to run through Friday, November 25.

The text of Constitutional Amendment 3 stipulates that the measure goes into effect 30 days after passage, which will be December 8. Lyndall Fraker, the director of the medical marijuana section of DHSS, said the agency began preparing the proposed regulations before election day in order to meet the deadline in the event that the ballot measure passed.

“Our legal team has been working on the rules for a few weeks now, so we actually have those ready — the rough draft ready for public display — and I think you’re going to see those in the next day or two and that’s important to get those out there,” Fraker told local media.

License Applications To Be Accepted Starting Next Month

Under the proposal, the health department’s Division of Cannabis Regulation will begin accepting recreational cannabis retailer license applications from the state’s existing medical marijuana dispensaries beginning on December 8. Regulators will then have 60 days to approve license applications, meaning that sales of adult-use cannabis should begin no later than February 2023.

Legal recreational weed sales could begin in Missouri even sooner than that, however. DHSS spokeswoman Lisa Cox told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that officials expect to convert licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries “before the 60-day deadline, as soon as we have rules for comprehensive facilities filed.”

“We anticipate comprehensive dispensaries will be able to begin selling to adult use consumers as soon as their license is approved for conversion,” Cox said.

Cox noted that the amendment bars the DHSS from issuing any new “comprehensive” licenses to stand-alone recreational marijuana dispensaries “for 548 days after December 8, 2022.”

Jack Cardetti, a spokesman for the Missouri Medical Cannabis Trade Association, said the timing of the proposed rollout “likely means that Missouri will have one of the quickest and smoothest transitions to adult use sales in the nation.”

The regulations call for a total of 192 licenses for combined medical marijuana and “comprehensive” adult-use dispensaries, to be evenly divided among the state’s eight districts. The proposed rules also set a limit of 62 cannabis cultivation facilities and 88 product manufacturers. 

Beginning in June 2023, the DHSS would begin to accept applications for up to 144 cannabis microbusinesses. A limit of 48 microbusiness licenses distributed among the state’s eight districts could be approved within the first 270 days, according to the regulations.

Constitutional Amendment 3 also legalizes the home cultivation of cannabis for personal use for adults who obtain a permit from the Division of Cannabis Regulation. Cox said the state “will begin accepting applications for adult use personal cultivation during or before the first week of January.”

Public comments on the proposed regulations for adult-use cannabis regulations in Missouri can be submitted through the DHSS website.

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In a case sure to reverberate around the world, the Argentinian Supreme Court has ruled that parents of sick children are allowed to grow their own cannabis to treat their children. This decision, they ruled, is in line with existing Argentine law—namely the decriminalization of cannabis for medical purposes.

As family law and cannabis legitimization intersect, this development is about as significant as a similar 2014 Israeli case. Namely, families of sick children requiring medical cannabis threatened to immigrate to Colorado unless they were given the right to obtain medical cannabis domestically. The government changed the law within a matter of weeks.

That said, it was not a complete victory in Argentina last week for those who pressed their case. The Court also ruled, unanimously, that a special patient registry now in effect, is not unconstitutional. This was an issue raised by Mamás Cannabis Medicinal (Macame) which presented the plaintiff’s cause. The Court reasoned that the state had the right to control and track all cannabis cultivation—including for medical purposes.

The decision in Argentina is, of course, significant domestically. Yet coming as it does as country after country is beginning to implement or at least talk about implementing home grow more generally, the timing is also very important. In this decision, the Argentine Court seems to be following a global trend that is emerging in countries as disparate as those in Latin America and Europe (Malta, Italy, Luxembourg, and Portugal, so far) to Asia (notably Thailand). Home grow for both recreational and medical use is very much a la mode in the international normalization discussion now clearly underway both legally and politically.

Why Is Home Grow Becoming a Global Default First Step Towards Reform?

There are several reasons for this rather sudden emergence of something that looks remarkably like a consensus at an international level around issues related to home cultivation. Namely, when faced with both a crisis in healthcare delivery systems in the aftermath of both global austerity followed by a global pandemic, and the inevitability of recreational reform, governments are apparently getting the message.

It is becoming increasingly obvious in other words that home grow is not a seditious way to undermine a legal market (of either the medical or recreational kind). Indeed, when tracked (either by being registered or permitted or both), home cultivation of cannabis is a very sensible path towards a normalized market. See Canada—although, of course, the system is not perfect.

Generally, and most certainly in countries on the verge of recreational reform like Germany (for example) today, it is the case that the people most affected by any delay in full legalization, of any kind, are patients. There are close to 200,000 criminal cases pending in the German courts alone for low level possession, cultivation, and/or use. This is a massive waste of time and money that the state can easily cut. In fact, case law is again beginning to trend in this direction, even if only for now, on appeal. However, increasingly it is also the case that courts are recognizing that insurers are also forcing legitimate patients to take legal action to obtain coverage. In the meantime, they must source their own, taking risks along the way.

For this reason, the entire role around home grow is likely to change aus Deutschland as it has in other places, albeit here, at this juncture more likely by legislation than legal action as has just occurred in Argentina.

Prosecuting sick people is not a winning look anywhere right now. In fact, making it easier for the chronically ill to more or less treat themselves at a time when healthcare systems are straining to keep up with just “regular” care, just sounds sensible no matter which way one looks at this. Or where. For an extreme example, see Ukraine. But beyond this, every western state is struggling with chronic care provision—including for those conditions normally treated with cannabis.

On top of such realities, of course, such legal and political decisions are coming at a time when states are being forced to look at how enforcement of rules if not laws themselves takes place—and for issues and themes far from just cannabis reform.

Home Grow Stimulates the Legal Market

Even though the Canadian model has shown that patients are absolutely going to be “competition” to the industry, in that they do not have to rely on a commoditized, bought product, there is another way to look at all of this. Indeed, it is also the case that patient home grow is a way to stimulate the legal, regulated market. Not to mention the broader economy beyond that which will benefit from money diverted from medication purchase.

Growing cannabis is not easy and takes energy. While there will always be recreational hobbyists, most people, including patients, would rather be able to buy cannabis in all its forms the way they buy food, medication, and other legal products.

This in turn creates jobs, revenue, and taxes.

The trick, of course, is to find a middle ground that allows both sides to flourish.

Just as legalization itself is inevitable, so is the right of people to grow their own cannabis, and for whatever use.

It is, after all, beyond all the demonization and stigma, “just” a plant.

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