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Minnesota's cannabis rollout hits a testing-lab bottleneck as OCM's Eric Taubel tours the state, the 2026 omnibus merges medical and adult-use supply chains with new macrobusiness licenses, and Anoka's city-run dispensary and Silver Therapeutics in Stillwater open their doors.
We unpack why Minnesota's cannabis shelves feel thin (hint: only three full-panel testing labs), what the 105-page 2026 omnibus actually changed, and the new stores opening across the state.
In this episode:
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Will: —and that's the thing, I was just at a buddy's place over the weekend and he's STILL asking me, like, "is it actually legal legal yet?"
Matilda: Oh my god.
Will: And I'm like, my guy, we're a year and change in. There are stores. With doors. That you can walk through.
Matilda: Ope, but honestly though? I get it. Because the rollout has been... what's the nice way to say it...
Will: Slow?
Matilda: Deliberate. Deliberate is the Minnesota-nice version.
Will: Deliberate. Okay. We're going with deliberate.
Matilda: Because the OCM has been doing this listening tour thing, right? Like actually driving around the state.
Will: Yeah, six cities. They just wrapped the Rochester stop at the beginning of the month. Eric Taubel — he's the executive director — he was down there basically fielding questions from everybody. Growers, retailers, regular folks.
Matilda: And what's wild is he's using these stops to RECRUIT people. Like openly.
Will: Recruit for what?
Matilda: Labs! Testing labs. He straight-up said if you're a microbiology or chemistry PhD with some capital, please — PLEASE — apply.
Will: That's not a listening tour, that's a job fair.
Matilda: Right? And the number is kinda staggering. Minnesota has issued five testing lab licenses. Five.
Will: For the whole state.
Matilda: For the whole state.
Will: Okay but, hold on — isn't it actually worse than five now?
Matilda: Yeah. That's the part that gets me. Legend Technical Services up in St. Paul — they were the oldest cannabis lab in Minnesota, like the OG — they shut down their cannabis program back in June.
Will: Shut it down why?
Matilda: OCM paused their license. Security issues, testing-requirement failures. The regulators basically said, nope, you're out.
Will: Uff da.
Matilda: So we went from five to four. And of those four, only three are doing full-panel testing.
Will: Three labs. For every flower, every edible, every seltzer going through the regulated supply chain in the whole state.
Matilda: Every single thing.
Will: That's a bottleneck.
Matilda: That's THE bottleneck. That's why I keep saying when people complain the shelves feel thin — it's not that growers aren't growing. It's that there's a traffic jam at the testing stage.
Will: Yeah and that's not a sexy problem, you know? Like you can't do a ribbon-cutting for "we hired more lab techs."
Matilda: No governor's showing up for that photo op.
Will: But it matters way more than almost anything else happening right now.
Matilda: One hundred percent.
Will: Okay so, speaking of the stuff that IS getting photo ops — licensing. Where are we on that?
Matilda: So this one actually blew my mind when I looked it up. As of about midway through this year, OCM had issued around 240 licenses.
Will: Okay.
Matilda: Out of... thirty-five hundred and change applicants.
Will: Wait.
Matilda: Yep.
Will: Thirty-five hundred applicants, 240 actual licenses out?
Matilda: 240-ish. And there's like 1,800 people stuck in this limbo zone — qualified, preliminarily approved, waiting on something.
Will: So winning the lottery is... the beginning.
Matilda: Winning the lottery is the beginning of a very long second phase. You've got a slot. Now you have to actually find real estate, pass municipal zoning, get your build-out inspected—
Will: Which is spendy.
Matilda: Which is REALLY spendy. We're talking hundreds of thousands sometimes before you ring your first sale.
Will: And in the meantime, your competitors are opening.
Matilda: And in the meantime, the market is shifting under you.
Will: Yeah. Okay I gotta admit something, Matilda.
Matilda: Mhm?
Will: Until this week I did not fully understand what a macrobusiness license was.
Matilda: Will.
Will: Listen! There's eight different license types in the omnibus bill, I lost the thread.
Matilda: Okay okay, so, this is actually the big policy news from the 2026 session.
Will: The 105-page bill.
Matilda: The 105-page cannabis omnibus. Passed in the closing hours of session, like they always do.
Will: Classic.
Matilda: The headline thing — and this is a BIG structural change — Minnesota merged the medical and the adult-use supply chains.
Will: Into one pipeline.
Matilda: Into one pipeline. Before, if you were a medical operator you were kinda walled off from the rec side. Now, same growers can feed both.
Will: Which should, in theory, help with supply.
Matilda: In theory. And then they killed the old medical combination license — that was the thing patients got stuck with for years — and replaced it with these eight new macrobusiness licenses that can serve patients AND rec customers under one roof.
Will: Okay THAT I kind of get. One business, two customers.
Matilda: One business, both customers. And they also did some stuff on hemp-derived THC beverages — like, party-size rules, how much you can bring to an event, that kind of thing.
Will: Which is relevant because this weekend...
Matilda: Oh, Autumn Brew Review!
Will: Tomorrow! Boom Island Park, one-thirty to five.
Matilda: And it's craft beer AND hemp-derived THC seltzers now. Which is just... that's the Minnesota market in a snapshot.
Will: Right? Beer flight, seltzer flight. Walk home along the river.
Matilda: Don't walk home impaired, kids.
Will: Yes, Mom.
Matilda: Just doing my job.
Will: Okay so — retail. New stores. What've we got.
Matilda: Oh this one's fun. Anoka.
Will: Anoka Cannabis Company.
Matilda: 839 East River Road. Opened in February. It is a city-RUN dispensary.
Will: Like, the city owns it.
Matilda: The city owns it. Like a municipal liquor store, but weed.
Will: Which, Minnesota, we invented municipal liquor stores basically.
Matilda: We love a muni liquor store up here. Little towns everywhere have one.
Will: And now Anoka's like, yeah, we'll just... do that. With cannabis.
Matilda: One of the only city-operated pot stores in the whole country. I think the only other one that's been around was in Washington state, like a decade ago.
Will: Huh. Okay I actually have a question for you.
Matilda: Shoot.
Will: Is that a good idea?
Matilda: You're asking me the policy question.
Will: I'm asking you the vibes question.
Matilda: Okay, honestly? I'm split. On the one hand, revenue goes directly back to city services. Which is cool. On the other hand... the city is now in the business of selling you weed.
Will: Yeah that's weird.
Matilda: It's a weird vibe! But I'm willing to see how it plays out.
Will: Fair.
Matilda: And then Stillwater — Stillwater FINALLY got its first licensed dispensary. Silver Therapeutics. 1778 Greeley Street South. Opened back in May.
Will: Which, for anyone who doesn't know Stillwater — that's the cute little river town east of the Cities.
Matilda: Super touristy. People drive out there for antiques and lunch on the river.
Will: And now, also, a dispensary.
Matilda: Round out your day.
Will: Okay here's a stat that I think people sleep on, Matilda. First-year sales.
Matilda: Oh give it to me.
Will: Minnesotans spent more than two hundred and fifty million dollars on legal cannabis in year one.
Matilda: Shut up.
Will: Roughly one-fifty rec, one hundred medical.
Matilda: That's... that's real money.
Will: And in the first ten months of that, the state pulled in about forty-five-point-six million in tax revenue.
Matilda: Okay so this is where I'm gonna push back on you a little, Will.
Will: Push.
Matilda: Because every time a sales number gets reported, the narrative is "the market is booming." And I just... I think that's an incomplete story.
Will: Why?
Matilda: Because 250 million in year one, split between medical and rec, in a state of five and a half million people — that's not a boom. That's a slow ramp. The illicit market was WAY bigger than that for decades.
Will: Hm. That's a fair point.
Matilda: Like, if we were truly converting the gray market, those numbers would be bigger. Which tells me a lot of people are still buying from their guy.
Will: Or from the hemp-derived THC side, which operates kind of parallel.
Matilda: Right. Or from across the border in a tribal store, which — speaking of.
Will: Yes! Let's talk tribal.
Matilda: Because this is honestly one of the more interesting parts of the Minnesota market, and I don't think it gets talked about enough.
Will: Agreed.
Matilda: So last year — 2025 — the state and the tribes negotiated this compact. And it says each tribe can operate up to eight off-reservation stores.
Will: Eight is a lot.
Matilda: Eight is a lot. There's seven open so far. White Earth, Red Lake Nation, Prairie Island — those are the three that are running them currently.
Will: And White Earth has gone HARD.
Matilda: White Earth has invested about thirty million dollars into their cannabis enterprise. Which is — for a tribal nation — that is a massive bet.
Will: And they're reinvesting the profits.
Matilda: Reinvesting profits. Scholarships are in the plan. They're playing a long game.
Will: Here's the part consumers should know though. The tribal stores aren't subject to the state cannabis excise tax.
Matilda: Which means?
Will: Which means roughly a 22% savings at the register versus a state-licensed store.
Matilda: 22% is not a small—
Will: 22% is a LOT.
Matilda: That's the difference between an eighth being spendy and an eighth being, like, reasonable.
Will: And people are figuring that out.
Matilda: Of course they are. People are smart about pricing.
Will: You betcha they are.
Matilda: There it is.
Will: Had to get one in.
Matilda: Okay, consumer education corner. You wanna do the one I pitched you?
Will: Myrcene?
Matilda: Myrcene.
Will: Okay walk us through it, because I will fully admit, my understanding of terpenes is like... citrus smell good, pine smell good, done.
Matilda: A sommelier you are not.
Will: Not even close.
Matilda: Okay so myrcene is a monoterpene. It's the most prevalent terpene in cannabis — not in every strain, but across the plant in general, it's the big one.
Will: Okay.
Matilda: And it's the one that gets blamed, or credited, depending on how you feel about it, for the whole "couch-lock" sedative vibe.
Will: Right, like the "indica makes you sleepy" marketing.
Matilda: Exactly. So. There's actual pharmacology to look at here. Peer-reviewed studies — animal studies — show that myrcene activates something called TRPV1, which is a pain-signaling receptor.
Will: Okay.
Matilda: And it enhances GABA-A inhibition, which is... think of GABA as the brain's chill-out neurotransmitter.
Will: Chill-out neurotransmitter. Got it.
Matilda: So on paper, mechanistically, there are plausible pathways for why myrcene MIGHT make you sedated.
Will: But?
Matilda: But — and this is the important part — there are no well-controlled human trials confirming a sedative effect in people.
Will: Wait, none?
Matilda: None. The animal data is suggestive. The marketing claims have ZOOMED past what the human evidence actually supports.
Will: So budtenders out here telling people "this one's got high myrcene, you'll be glued to the couch"—
Matilda: Are telling you a story that sounds scientific but hasn't been proven in humans yet.
Will: Huh.
Matilda: My take? Respect the pharmacology, resist the marketing certainty.
Will: That is a very good line, Matilda.
Matilda: Thank you, I workshopped it.
Will: I can tell.
Matilda: Okay but here's where I think it gets practical.
Will: Yeah.
Matilda: When you're shopping — whether you're at Wildflower North Loop, or Simply Crafted, or picking up a seltzer from Stigma, or you're at Green Goods in Bloomington, Edina Canna, wherever — don't let anybody sell you a specific EFFECT based on one terpene.
Will: Because?
Matilda: Because effects come from the whole package. The cannabinoids, the terpene profile, YOUR body, what you ate, your tolerance, the time of day, whether you slept the night before—
Will: Whether you're stressed.
Matilda: Whether you're stressed, exactly.
Will: Okay but — pushback moment. I want to come back at you on this.
Matilda: Come on.
Will: Because I think there's a version of what you said that goes too far the other way, which is like, "nothing is knowable, trust nothing, it's all placebo."
Matilda: Hm. Fair.
Will: Like, people KNOW what works for them. I've got friends who swear by certain strains for sleep. Are they placebo-ing themselves? Maybe. Does it matter if it works?
Matilda: You're making a very practical argument.
Will: I am a practical man.
Matilda: Okay, I'll give you this — personal experience is real data. For YOU. The issue is when a budtender takes YOUR data and sells it as if it's going to be MY data.
Will: Okay fair, fair. So the move is—
Matilda: Try things in small amounts. Pay attention. Build YOUR map. Don't buy somebody else's map.
Will: That's good.
Matilda: And honestly? mncannabishub.com has a bunch of this stuff written out — menus from local shops, reviews, education posts. If you're trying to figure out what's actually available near you, it's a solid starting point.
Will: Shameless plug acknowledged.
Matilda: Not shameless, EARNED.
Will: Earned.
Matilda: Okay here's where I'm gonna push back on YOU again.
Will: Oh, round two.
Matilda: Round two. Earlier when we were doing the sales numbers, you were being very "this is a success story" about it.
Will: I was leaning that way, yeah.
Matilda: And I pushed back then but I wanna go deeper. Because I think the lab bottleneck and the licensing backlog and the slow sales numbers — those are all the same problem.
Will: Say more.
Matilda: The same problem is: Minnesota designed a very careful, very regulated, very slow rollout. And "careful" has real costs. Patients wait longer. Legal operators can't get product tested. Lottery winners can't open. And every month that drags on, the illicit market says "cool, we'll keep your customers warm."
Will: Yeah.
Matilda: So I don't think the right framing is "we're doing great." I think it's "we're doing it carefully, and that is NOT free."
Will: Okay. I'll meet you most of the way there.
Matilda: Most of the way?
Will: Most of the way. Because I do think we're learning in public and the alternative is... what, the chaos some other states had?
Matilda: Fair.
Will: Like I'd rather have three full-panel labs that are rigorous than fifteen that are rubber-stamping stuff.
Matilda: Agreed. I just want three labs to become eight labs faster.
Will: Yeah no, that part I'm with you on.
Matilda: Okay.
Will: Hey, before we wrap — events. People wanna know what's on the calendar.
Matilda: Yeah okay. So tomorrow — Autumn Brew Review. We mentioned it. Boom Island Park, Minneapolis, 1:30 to 5. Craft beer plus hemp-derived THC seltzer sampling.
Will: Perfect fall-in-the-Cities day.
Matilda: Dress warm though. Boom Island by the river in October? Can get crisp.
Will: Ope, yeah.
Matilda: And then looking ahead — CannaFest.
Will: When is that?
Matilda: November 12th. 6 to 9 p.m. The Lowlands, in St. Paul. Minnesota Monthly puts it on.
Will: Okay, I'll be there.
Matilda: I'll be there. Come say hi.
Will: Come say hi.
Matilda: Okay — one concrete takeaway. What's yours?
Will: Mine? If you're a shopper, start comparing prices across state-licensed and tribal stores. Not because one is better than the other — both are legal, both are regulated — but that 22% difference adds up and you should know what you're paying for.
Matilda: That's a good one.
Will: What's yours?
Matilda: Mine is: next time a budtender tells you a specific terpene is gonna make you feel a specific way — ask them what the human research actually says.
Will: Ooh, confrontational.
Matilda: Not confrontational! Curious.
Will: Curious.
Matilda: You're a consumer. You're allowed to ask.
Will: You ARE allowed to ask.
Matilda: And honestly if the budtender knows their stuff, they'll give you a nuanced answer and you'll trust them more.
Will: Good filter.
Matilda: Good filter.
Will: Alright. Where do people go, Matilda.
Matilda: mncannabishub.com. Menus from the local shops we mentioned, reviews, latest news on the OCM stuff, education corner — all of it.
Will: We'll be back next week. Stay warm out there, it's getting to be that time.
Matilda: Grab a seltzer. Grab a flannel. Head to the cabin one more time before it closes up.
Will: Skol.
Matilda: Bye, Will.
Will: Bye, Matilda.
Minnesota's weekly cannabis news, dispensary updates, and policy briefings. Recreational and medical, OCM moves, new strains, dispensary openings, and the people running the industry. Brought to you by mncannabishub.com and Leafwell (code MNHUB — $99 medical card visits).