When Minnesota's recreational marijuana bill was written in 2023 and revised in 2024, it was established by sponsors on a few basic policy pillars.
It would replace as much as possible an illegal market with a legal, regulated and taxed market; it would stress social equity to help those most harmed by illegality to benefit by legality; and it would try to foster a home-grown business modeled on the craft beer industry. That is, as much as was legally possible, the state model was to keep out large, out-of-state companies that could use their size and wealth to overwhelm the market.
Two of those pillars were on display last week in a Ramsey County courtroom — at least a Zoom version of one. There, a whole passel of lawyers representing a varied collection of social equity-certified license applicants were asking a judge to order the state to delay a lottery to award the first 280 cannabis licenses.
Why? They all had been informed the previous week that they were being denied entry into that lottery and would have to reapply next year for tickets to the much larger lottery pool for all applicants.
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