Minnesota Marijuana Legalization Bill Making Progress
A bill that would legalize marijuana for recreational use in Minnesota takes another step closer to become law.
The bill would allow adults over the age of 21 to buy and possess up to 1.5 oz of marijuana and grow up to eight plants, and it passed through its fifth committee hearing yesterday. The Environment and Natural Resources Finance and Policy Committee passed the bill with an 11-7 vote. The hearing lasted less than an hour, and you can watch the entire thing below.
House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler is one of the sponsors of the legislation and in the hearing he says, "We have an opportunity to create the kind of new industry that can be a model for not only how to be inclusive and how to repair past wrongs, but also to do so in a way that upholds very high environmental standards."
The committee adopted some changes to the bill which include rules about working as a lobbyist after serving on the cannabis advisory council and rules about flavored marijuana, the product can only taste like the plant. They also adopted some changes to address the delivery of marijuana.
The bill is now off to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee for discussion and a vote next week and is expected to make it through all the committees and make it to the floor for a full vote sometime in May. But that could be the end of the line for the bill, the Minnesota GOP is still generally against the bill, and they control the legislature.
A poll from February 2020 found that 51% of Minnesotans believe that recreational marijuana should be legal in the state with 37% saying that it should not.