Minnesota lawmakers consider ways to ease backlogs at state’s two cannabis testing labs

Minnesota’s two hemp and cannabis testing labs are encountering a problem that comes with market growth: Longer turnaround times as demand for adult-use cannabis products spikes.

At ChRi Laboratories in St. Paul, turnaround times have nearly tripled since last fall. Chief Growth Officer Brad Larmie says it’s taking three weeks to get through testing because of an increasing volume of recreational cannabis clients.

“Things are moving,” Larmie said. “I’m feeling positive for the industry.”

The time from product arriving to results being ready for Legend Technical Services takes at least two and a half weeks, or in some cases much longer than that.

A third facility, Fina Analytics, is licensed to do testing but only for potency.

“The core of the issue is there simply are not enough cannabis testing labs in Minnesota to adequately serve the recreational cannabis market,” Legend said in an emailed statement.

Gabriel Hanson of Loon Labs runs a microbusiness that manufactures cannabis products. He says he sent his first batch of raw concentrates for testing on Dec. 30 and got results back almost six weeks later.

“This is getting absolutely ridiculous. You're going to put businesses under by getting them licensed before you had the infrastructure to actually support them,” he said.

Others like Preston Torres at Concentrate Labs, who sent in a batch of cannabis rosin pucks for testing, say it took about four weeks to get results back. He said he’s hoping to have products on shelves by April.

The long wait times for testing is what a proposed bill from Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, hopes to tackle. Port’s legislation, which would allow Minnesota’s hemp industry to continue testing out-of-state until May 31, 2027, passed in a Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee. It’s now headed to the Senate floor.

The companion bill began making its way through the House and a committee sent it Thursday to the floor for an eventual vote.

The state’s Office of Cannabis Management had already pushed the in-state testing deadline for hemp producers from Jan. 1 to March 31 of this year. The legislation before lawmakers would delay the statutory requirement to test all hemp-derived products at a state-licensed lab for about another year and a half.

Port’s bill would free up both labs to focus on testing recreational cannabis.

Office of Cannabis Management director Eric Taubel, who supports the bill, said two more testing labs are in the final stages of getting licensed. Five others are a few steps behind in the pre-approval process.

“We feel confident we're going to increase lab capacity pretty shortly here, and that as we continue to onboard new labs, it'll help with those turnaround times,” Taubel said in an interview with MPR News.

He also said the deadline extension will help hemp producers make better decisions on business operations as the federal ban on hemp-derived products looms in November. Bipartisan efforts are underway to delay the ban, including one congressional bill that’s sponsored by Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

A group of hemp beverage producers submitted a letter of support for the deadline extension.

“The current implementation deadline stands to halt the currently successful market,” the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild wrote in a letter. “As more businesses become operational, the number of current testing labs that meet requirements is grossly insufficient.”

Minnesota’s adult-use cannabis market is slowly coming online with 157 businesses already licensed as of Wednesday. The majority of them are retailers and about 1,400 other businesses are on the runway with pre-approval.

Taubel said Minnesota is starting to see its first wave of locally-crafted products come to shelves, citing the first sale of a cannabis flower from a state-licensed cultivator about two weeks ago.

Sales are also increasing every month. In January, retail adult-use sales totaled to $10.3 million – up from $9.4 million in December.

“It certainly is my anticipation that we will start to see a lot more variety of products on the shelf, and a lot of those products coming from micro cultivators and micro manufacturers that were able to get those licenses converted last fall,” he said.

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