MinnPost: The tough, lonely job of being a marijuana legalization opponent in Minnesota

When testifying before the Senate Taxes Committee, Bacchus displayed a clear jar with notes inside containing the names of 40 people who have suffered from and/or died from cannabis-induced psychosis.

“Their families have asked me to be here on their behalf because they’re too ashamed, they’re too embarrassed to be here,” she said. Bacchus told the committee there will be far greater costs from legalization than the fiscal analysis for the bill predicts.

Bacchus’ testimony is usually followed by lawmakers expressing sorrow for her loss. But her request to slow down the bill, put caps on THC potency into law and increase the age of consumption from 21 to 25 have not been accepted. The bill gives the power to set potency limits to the new Office of Cannabis Management.

Sponsors acknowledge downsides to legalization. But they argue current prohibition has made the impacts of marijuana worse through black market sales, crime, tainted products and the inequitable impact of marijuana law enforcement on people of color. One of the major articles of the bills is to expunge criminal records of people convicted of many crimes that will be removed from the law books.

The bills also attempt to get those in low-income areas that faced disproportionate enforcement and sanctions a significant share of the businesses created by the bills.

Rep. Zack Stephenson, the Coon Rapids DFLer who is the prime sponsor of HF 100, begins his committee testimony with this: “Minnesotans are ready. Cannabis should not be illegal. Minnesotans deserve the freedom and respect to make responsible decisions about cannabis themselves.

“Our current laws are doing more harm than good,” Stephenson said. Both he and Sen. Lindsey Port, the DFLer from Burnsville who is the prime sponsor of SF 73, have said they think they have enough votes to pass any bill that emerges from a House-Senate conference committee later in the session. Gov. Tim Walz has promised to sign the bill.

All that makes the task before opponents daunting. Ryan Hamilton, the lobbyist for the Minnesota Catholic Conference, said it was a more lonely task in previous sessions when he was one of the few opposing previous versions. He sees the opposition now as “pretty robust” with law enforcement, medical professionals, employer groups, drug and alcohol counselors and survivors working together.

Has a larger coalition made a difference?

“Not really, to be honest,” Hamilton said. The professional lobbyist said he is used to having his testimony capped by committee chairs. But he said he thinks people like Heather Bacchus and her husband Randy should have gotten more than a couple of minutes to tell their story.

“When you have mothers and fathers and parents who have been impacted by the proliferation of high-potency marijuana, they should be given the full time to tell that story,” Hamilton said. “An issue of this magnitude, for the level of public policy change,  people should have been given as much time as they needed to share their perspective.”

Kim Bemis is the co-chair of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Minnesota which subtitles its name with “preventing another big tobacco.” Bemis is in long-term recovery from cannabis-use disorder and a former counselor at the Hazelden Betty Ford treatment center. He has long been a voice against legalization and now runs an online drug and alcohol intervention program for teens and their families.

“Minnesota may think it is ready for the proposed legalization of cannabis, but we question whether it is really ready for this major push to expand access to cannabis,” Bemis said. Smart Approaches to Marijuana Minnesota was part of the coalition that earlier this month presented what it calls the Caution Act, a bill that would delay for a year the legalization aspects of the bills to provide time for a set of studies. One is a so-called baseline study, as Arizona conducted, that would measure the current presence of cannabis and the current impacts of its use. Only then, opponents say, can the state have a starting point to know the impact on legalization.

“How big is the black market? What is the prevalence of substance-abuse disorder related to marijuana? What is the prevalence of use in our high schools?” Hamilton said. “Did we curtail the black market or not? How would we know if we don’t know where we started?”

The group also wants to give state agencies time to better predict how much money and how many resources they will need for the various assignments contained in the bill.

But Hamilton said he thinks the Legislature still could move immediately on some of the criminal justice provisions in the two bills, especially expungement of criminal records for crimes that will no longer be crimes after legalization. That can happen without full legalization.

“Well-meaning Minnesotans would be appalled when they discover that while House File 100 offers redemption to those who were harmed by the war on drugs, it makes that redemption contingent upon the commercialization of a drug that wreaks havoc on the human brain,” Hamilton told the House Commerce Committee.

Their concerns about age limits and potency mostly have been rebuffed. Some changes to the bills on behalf of law enforcement and local governments have been included, though most of those groups are not totally satisfied.

Continue reading the complete article from MinnPost.