Dabney: 2026 could be big for Minnesota cannabis — if we fix these bottlenecks

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Walking into MJBizCon — the largest cannabis industry event in the U.S. — in Las Vegas, I had the same feeling you get at an airport right before boarding. Everyone was moving fast and scanning for the next gate, and every conversation seemed to start mid-sentence.

Amid the neon signs and polished booths, investors in blazers circled as if they had five minutes to decide the future. Growers in hoodies eagerly swapped stories. And in the middle of it all I kept hearing people talk about a state that isn’t used to this pace yet: Minnesota.

Over and over, people stopped me when they saw “Minnesota” on my badge.

“Wow, you all showed up this year.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot about Minnesota.”

Behind the small talk at the December gathering was a clear message that people in the national industry see 2026 as the year Minnesota really turns the key on its adult-use market. Not the soft openings and limited tribal or medical cannabis sales we’ve seen so far, but a functioning, statewide system with real supply, real competition and real jobs.

That tracks with what I heard from Minnesota business owners wandering those Vegas expo aisles, too. Cultivators, manufacturers, future retailers, Native businesses, legacy hemp operators turned hopeful licensees — they were all there. You could feel a mix of excitement and anxiety in almost equal parts.

The excitement is easy to understand. Minnesota legalized adult use in 2023, created the Office of Cannabis Management, and is now in the middle of license reviews and buildouts that are supposed to set us up for the long haul. The first legal adult-use sales outside tribal lands started only in 2025; the real scaling is ahead of us, not behind.

The anxiety comes from two very specific weak links that almost every business owner I talked to mentioned: testing and transportation.

Right now, Minnesota has only three state-approved cannabis- and hemp-testing labs gearing up for an adult-use surge — and just two can run the full compliance panel the state requires to sell legally. More labs are expected to be licensed, but “expected” doesn’t clear a backlog or lower a bill. With so few labs able to run the full panel — potency plus contaminants like pesticides — the market will run into the simple reality that the businesses that can guarantee steady volume will get the best terms.

When capacity is tight, turnaround times for testing can stretch four to eight weeks instead of the marketed seven-day timelines. Taylor Schertler with Legend Technical Services recently said his lab is running a five-week backlog. He added that they have brought on additional staff and instruments, but meaningful improvements in turnaround times won’t likely materialize for months.

Such delays are not just inconvenient; they change the math. A large operator can keep product moving from other rooms or other stock-keeping units while one batch waits. A smaller one might be staring at their only sellable inventory behind a “pending test” status.

Add to that our transportation bottleneck. As of January, only five transport licenses had actually been issued statewide with about two dozen more stuck in preliminary-approval limbo. For a market that’s supposed to move thousands of pounds of legal product from farms to manufacturers to retailers, that’s like trying to run Metro Transit with five buses.

Those costs don’t evaporate. They land on someone’s spreadsheet — the entrepreneur’s, the investor’s, the consumer’s — and they slow everything down.

At MJBizCon, I wasn’t talking about these issues in abstract policy terms, but in the language of cashflow and survival as a small-business owner myself, planning to open a dispensary and cultivation facility this spring. I kept running the math in my head. I can’t afford to have a product just sitting while it waits on a test. If I miss a delivery window, that’s another week of payroll I’m covering with no revenue coming in. When testing and transportation are scarce and expensive, your cost per gram goes up before you’ve even paid the electric bill.

The question is not whether we face bumps — we have and will. The question is whether we learn fast enough that those bumps don’t become walls.

From my perspective, that means a few things.

First, we need to treat testing and transportation as critical infrastructure, not afterthoughts. That could mean targeted support to bring more labs online quickly, clear and efficient guidance for would-be testers, and transparent timelines from regulators about when additional capacity is expected. For transport, it means clearing bottlenecks in the licensing pipeline and communicating clearly with the businesses who are supposed to rely on that system.

Second, we have to remember why we’re doing this. The point of legalization wasn’t just to swap illicit dealers for legal stores; it was to build a safer, more transparent, more equitable market. That only works if legal operators can move product efficiently and get it tested reliably. Otherwise, we leave room for the illicit market to keep doing what it’s always done — fill the gaps.

Finally, we should hold onto the optimism I felt at MJBizCon, because it’s real. I met Minnesotans who have spent years preparing for this moment — farmers learning new genetics, small-business owners writing and rewriting business plans, community members fighting for social equity provisions. They were tired, worried and stretched thin, but still overwhelmingly hopeful.