Seeding the Industry: Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management Continues Rolling Out Adult-Use Licensing

This week, the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management announced that they are still processing the 1,817 social equity adult-use Cannabis licensing applications received by the Office in August. The previous application window which officially closed on August 12, 2024, represented the first of many anticipated licensing windows and was open to only pre-qualified Social Equity Applicants. According to the Office of Cannabis Management, the 1,817 applications submitted can be broken down accordingly:

It is noteworthy that the number of applicants for each type of license, except for the wholesaler category, had more applicants than the number of licenses available. The below table illustrates the number of licenses which were available during the first licensing window.

Currently, Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management is processing all the submitted applications to determine whether each application meets the minimum standard. Once the Office of Cannabis Management has finished processing the applications, all applications that meet the minimum qualifications, except the wholesaler applications, will be entered into a lottery for a chance to receive the applicable license. Since fewer wholesaler applications were submitted than available licenses, a lottery for the wholesaler licenses will not be necessary and all qualified applicants will receive a license.

Concurrently while the Office of Cannabis Management is conducting the lottery, they are also receiving comments for its proposed draft rules for the adult-use cannabis industry. Once the rules are finalized, the Office of Cannabis Management will re-open the licensing portal for future application windows for both social equity and non-social equity applicants. The post-rulemaking application window represents the first opportunity for non-social equity candidates to apply for an adult-use cannabis license in Minnesota. It includes the following licenses available to non-social equity candidates:

• 25 cannabis cultivator licenses;
• 12 cannabis manufacturer licenses;
• 100 cannabis retailer licenses;
• 50 cannabis mezzobusiness licenses; and
• potentially unlimited microbusiness licenses.