House passes amended cannabis policy bill, returns it to Senate

The House quickly gave its OK for the omnibus cannabis policy bill with little debate Monday.

The bill would mostly make technical changes to the state’s cannabis laws, but it contains a few tweaks needed as the state’s cannabis program gets up and running.  

The House amended HF1615/SF2370* with a delete-all amendment to insert the House language. Passed 82-50, the bill returns to the Senate for concurrence. A conference committee is expected to work out the differences.

The rollout of the state’s recreational cannabis program hasn’t gone smoothly, said Rep. Nolan West (R-Blaine), who collaborated on the House cannabis bill with sponsor Rep. Zack Stephenson (DFL-Coon Rapids).

“This bill contains some provisions that are important for ensuring a smooth rollout,” West said.

[MORE: Commerce panel OKs omnibus cannabis bill]

Among its policy changes, the bill would remove the requirement that beverages with no more than 10 milligrams of THC be labeled as two servings, create a lower-potency hemp wholesaler license and give visiting patients to Minnesota the same rights as medical cannabis patients in the state.

The bill was successfully amended to, in part, allow medical combination businesses to sell to other cannabis businesses and deliver medical cannabis to patients. An amendment was also successfully added to limit advertisement of consuming alcohol and cannabis together.

Rep. Bidal Duran (R-Bemidji), who works in law enforcement, opposes the bill because marijuana is a Schedule I drug and has no therapeutic value.

“When we look at marijuana and what it’s doing to our children and what it’s doing to our community here, we need to be very, very careful in what we do,” he said. “We, in the state of Minnesota, make legislation hopefully that is going to benefit us, not rip us down, so marijuana is not going to benefit our community.”