Former Colorado officials are in Minnesota this week to talk about lessons learned.
Advocates
for legal recreational marijuana in Minnesota say they are readying a
set of principles in the next couple of weeks to guide their push in the
next session of the Legislature that convenes in February.
“This
process that we’re going through — these town halls and developing
principles and policy recommendations — at the end of all of this we
would expect to be a bill, ready for introduction at the beginning of
session, that would be the state-of-the-art in the country,” Rep. Ryan
Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, said Tuesday.
Winkler,
the House majority leader, has been touring the state hearing
Minnesotans’ thoughts on legalization. He also has been meeting with
members of Gov. Tim Walz’s administration and House and Senate members,
including both skeptics and advocates.
Although
legislation to legalize recreation marijuana faces steep odds in the
Republican-controlled Senate, Walz has instructed state agencies to be
prepared to implement a new law if a bill should reach his desk next
year. Among the questions facing state officials are the tax,
regulatory, law enforcement and economic impacts of legal cannabis.
Winkler,
who expects to be the chief sponsor of a legalization bill, is working
with several officials from Colorado, which legalized recreational
marijuana five years ago. Former Denver City Attorney Doug Friednash and
former Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett, both Democrats,
are participating in Minnesota town hall meetings on cannabis with
Democratic legislators this week.
They are also talking with police,
sheriffs and county attorneys about lessons Colorado has learned.
Both men said Tuesday that they initially opposed legalization, but have since changed their minds.
“From a
practical perspective and from a public safety perspective, I’ve come to
conclude that legalization and appropriate regulation of marijuana is
better than criminalization,” Garnett said.
If
legislators here do legalize recreational use, it could take up to a
year to set up the regulatory structure, Friednash said. But he said
that timeline could be much shorter if state departments and agencies
are on board early and Minnesota has a licensing mechanism set up.
To date, 11 states and the District of Columbia have already legalized cannabis for adult use.
Minnesota
Democrats pushed last session to create a task force to study the idea
of following other states’ lead and allowing recreational use of the
drug. The Republican-controlled Senate chose not to move forward with
the task force, though Winkler has moved forward on his own with a
process he said has essentially replaced what the task force would have
done.
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