Legal cannabis changed Colorado and Michigan. How could it change Minnesota?

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: The Minnesota House is poised to vote soon on a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana. The bill has gone through numerous committees with the last hurdle coming in the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this week. If the bill passes in both the House and the Senate, it would just need a signoff from Governor Tim Walz, who supports legalization.

21 states have already legalized cannabis for recreational use. These states are windows into what might happen in Minnesota if marijuana is legalized. Star Tribune reporters Ryan Faircloth and Brooks Johnson are covering the legalization effort. Ryan traveled to Colorado, Brooks to Michigan to find out what happens after marijuana legalization in both the short and the long term. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

RYAN FAIRCLOTH: Yeah, thank you, Cathy.

BROOKS JOHNSON: Thanks so much for having us.

CATHY WURZER: I appreciate your time. Thank you. Brooks, I'm going to start with you. Michigan became the first Midwestern state to legalize cannabis back in December of 2019. And I understand after reading your piece that the underlying advice you got from advocates there was to learn from their mistakes. So tell us more about that.

BROOKS JOHNSON: Absolutely, yeah. Voter initiative passed in 2018. And the first sales were in December 2019. And some of the mistakes that folks told us to learn from wouldn't necessarily apply in Minnesota. The black market in Michigan is thriving because they have this caregiver patient model with medical marijuana that's fairly unregulated. And that allows a lot of more or less illicit marijuana to enter the market and go across state lines as well.

Other things they told us to watch out for, high prices in the beginning. We've seen this in many states. But it's going to take a while for the supply to catch up with demand and bring those prices down below black market, which we've seen in Michigan as prices go far below what's normal for black market prices. And yet the state still continues to take in more revenue every month. And sales continue to grow.

CATHY WURZER: By the way, who's in business in Michigan? Who's selling?

BROOKS JOHNSON: Who is in business? It reminds me of the early days and even continuing days of the craft beer boom. Some folks talked a lot about the social equity goals that the state has are being missed. Surveys by the state regulators show that a lot of folks opening businesses are disproportionately white, male, well educated, and well off.

And so they say-- advocates say to get it right right out of the gate. If you want to do social equity, you've got to focus on it right away. And that was the case in Colorado as well where it wasn't really focused on as much at the front end since they were the first to do it.

Michigan learned from a dozen-plus states. And yet still they're having trouble getting folks to open businesses, to stay in business from a diversity of backgrounds. And so that's something that they say Minnesota really needs to pay attention to if it's going to be a goal of our legislation.

CATHY WURZER: So Ryan, you want to expand on that since you went to Colorado?

RYAN FAIRCLOTH: Yep, yep, of course. So yeah, I heard quite a bit from folks from public safety, from local officials, such as mayors, that social equity was not built in on the front end of their legalization initiative. And they voted to legalize marijuana there back in 2012. Sales began in 2014.

And they just said social equity just wasn't as much a part of the conversation. In recent years, they've been trying to remedy that. For example, in Denver, they had put a moratorium on new marijuana business licenses for a few years because the market has become pretty crowded there.

And they only opened it up in the past couple of years to give exclusive access to applicants who meet certain social equity criteria, whether it be from marginalized communities, people who are harmed by the war on drugs long ago who have cannabis possession, convictions on their record. And they are giving them exclusive access through 2027 actually.

CATHY WURZER: When you look at the Minnesota bill-- and gosh, that thing has gone through a lot of endorsements, I think, what? Nine endorsements at this point. So it's been changed a lot. What's the equity situation when you look at what we're talking about in the Minnesota bill, just generally speaking?

BROOKS JOHNSON: I'll jump in. This is Brooks. Oh, sorry.

CATHY WURZER: Go ahead, Brooks. Go ahead.

BROOKS JOHNSON: Yeah, so it does set money aside for grants and specifically has a social equity applicant process where applicant's four licenses for cannabis businesses would be scored differently or be given more points because they're social equity applicants. This can be folks from diverse backgrounds or from communities that have been adversely affected by cannabis prohibition to date.

Now, some of the dollars are still going to get shaken out. But a lot of folks in Michigan told me that it really is the financial aspect that's keeping a lot of folks from diverse backgrounds out of the business. It's that up front-- it's hard to get loans for a federally illegal business.

And so it's already harder to get loans as well if you're an African-American in America for any kind of business. And so that combined needs to be I guess paid attention to when the legislation moves through because right now, yeah, there are some grant programs. But whether they go far enough, that remains to be seen.

CATHY WURZER: See, gentlemen, on Morning Edition today, I spoke with the Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson who's part of this Minnesotans Against Marijuana Legalization coalition. And he said that Colorado and other states that have legalized marijuana have seen this dramatic increase in road accidents and fatalities because of marijuana use. Now, is that something that you found? Ryan, I'm going to start with you on that?

RYAN FAIRCLOTH: Yeah. Yeah. So there is some data on this. The Colorado State Patrol specifically tracks the citations they give out for DUI. It's broken out by drugs, drug and alcohol and combination. And marijuana-involved DUI citations have nearly doubled since 2014 from about-- I think it's from about 684 or so to now about 1,500.

But at the same time, alcohol DUIs, alcohol-only DUIs have gone down significantly, like cut in half nearly. So the overall number of DUIs happening in Colorado, at least according to the State Patrol citations, are down from what they were when it was legalized. But marijuana-involved DUIs are up.

Traffic fatalities are a bit hard to gauge because as you look across the country, in a lot of places, including Minnesota, they've been going up. And they've spiked since COVID. And I even talked to the Colorado State Patrol chief about this. And he said, we really feel like there are more marijuana-involved DU-- or marijuana-impaired drivers on the roads.

But there are so many factors happening right now, whether it's increases in mental health issues, more reckless driving, and so on, that it's really hard to place the blame on spiking traffic deaths on marijuana. And I think Brooks, as he can tell you in a second, found interesting data comparison between Michigan and Minnesota on the traffic fatalities.

CATHY WURZER: Brooks.

BROOKS JOHNSON: Absolutely. Similar story in Michigan with the-- maybe not database but anecdotally seeing more impaired folks on the road. The data says that drug-involved crashes and fatalities in Michigan both increased 20% between 2019 and 2021. That's the most recent data available from Michigan State Police.

Now, Minnesota in that same time saw drug-related traffic deaths more than triple in that time, while drug involved crashes rose 55%. Neither state breaks down by drug. So this could be a variety of issues. Folks say that alcohol and marijuana are being used together. And if you have a blood alcohol content at 0.8 or higher, they're usually not going to test for cannabis.

And so it's really tricky. A lot of experts have told us it's just tricky to get the data right. But that is something that we should learn from these states. If Minnesota does this, pay attention to the data. Start tracking now. And make sure that there's a good baseline to measure from.

CATHY WURZER: So Ryan, you've been covering this. Go ahead if you want to make a quick comment about that.

RYAN FAIRCLOTH: Yeah, I was just going to add one more thing. And something that critics of the marijuana legalization effort at the Capitol say and are correct on is that there's not a reliable roadside impairment test for marijuana. So what we've seen in Colorado is that the State Patrol, the police departments, sheriff's departments have all trained a lot of their personnel in advance roadside impairment, this training to help them identify the signs of impairment.

And so they just in general have more of their public safety personnel keyed into this. And they're finding more impaired drivers. But at the same time, it can be hard with marijuana because it can be in your system for days. So they order a toxicology report. It doesn't always necessarily tell you that they were high at the time of driving.

CATHY WURZER: You two did a good job when you went out and got into-- you covered a lot of different ground here both in Michigan and Colorado. I appreciate your time here today. Thank you so much.

RYAN FAIRCLOTH: Yeah, thank you, Cathy

BROOKS JOHNSON: Thank you, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Ryan Faircloth, Brooks Johnson are reporters for the Star Tribune.