The marijuana legalization bill that has been making its way through the Minnesota House is now approved in another committee. The sixth House committee approves marijuana legalization. So, the bill will move forward.
House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler (D), Speaker Melissa Hortman (D), along with other lawmakers filed the measure in February. It will allow adults over the age of 21 to purchase and possess up to 1.5 ounces of marijuana. They can cultivate up to eight plants, of which four can be mature.
The House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee passed it in a 9-7 vote. This came just days after another panel approved the legislation with amendments.
The last House committee that approved the bill was the Environment and Natural Resources Finance and Policy Committee. This was just three days ago on Monday. The members of the committee adopted several changes to the proposal. For example, now it requires that members of a cannabis advisory council cannot serve as lobbyists while on the panel and for two years following the end of their service.
The next stop for the bill will be the State Government Finance and Elections Committee. There we will see if this committee approves marijuana legalization or if it is back to square one.
Winkler said that he expects the bill to go through the remaining panels by the end of April, with a floor vote anticipated in May.
The Future of the Bill
If the proposal does make its way through the House to the Senate, it will be an uphill battle.
The Republican-controlled Senate has indicated that they are more interested in revising the state’s current medical cannabis program than enacting a recreational marijuana proposal.
As more states legalize adult-use marijuana like New York, Winkler said that Minnesota is “falling behind a national movement towards progress”. Later, he took to Twitter to express his concerns saying, “MN has some of the worst criminal justice disparities in the country, and legalizing cannabis & expunging convictions is a first step towards fixing that.”
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