Recreational marijuana is legal in Minnesota for people over the age of 21. There are still some laws limiting its sale for now. Sgt. Beau Schoenhard of the Robbinsdale Police Department said current regulation has made the state “the Wild West” when it comes to cannabis.
“There’s all these ins and outs of the law and what can and can’t be done, and people just don’t know, because the effort that the state put into it was pretty much zero. [This] left us and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office to figure it out on our own,” he said. “So it’s been difficult.”
Even when reading the law, it can be confusing. Though people may be using cannabis everywhere in practice, it is technically only legal to use on private property, something Schoenhard says is poorly defined in statute.
“It’s the biggest gray area of a law that I’ve ever seen,” Schoenhard said. “So it’s difficult. It’s difficult for us, and it’s difficult for the public to use it legally because we just don’t have enough case law and answers yet to how these things are flushing out.”