Tolkkinen: Their CBD business was about to take off. Then Minnesota told them they couldn’t ship.

VINING, MINN. - Matt Ruckheim pulled over on the entrance to I-94 and wiped away tears.

He had just learned that a Minnesota administrative law judge on Feb. 12 overturned a state ban on shipping edible hemp products through the mail. As a grower, it would mean his livelihood could resume.

“Are you serious??!!” he texted me. “I am crying.”

Ruckheim, of Parkers Prairie, has been growing hemp since 2019 and has been shipping R Bottled Gold hemp products for several years.

But last October, while filing to renew his license, he read on the state Office of Cannabis Management (OCM)’s website that shipping directly to customers was forbidden. It was the office’s interpretation of state law that said retailers can’t sell to people who are under 21 or visibly intoxicated.

Retailers were allowed to deliver lower-potency hemp edibles and beverages in person but not through the mail. That was tough enough for retailers in densely populated urban areas. It was devastating for rural Minnesota retailers, whose customers are often spread over a wide area.

And it was particularly hard on the Ruckheims, who grow their own hemp from seed and hand harvest and dry it. Ruckheim had painstakingly built up hundreds of customers in 20 states including Minnesota through word of mouth, digital content, and exposure on a local PBS show. He said the shipping ban cost them 80% to 90% of their customers, as most lived more than 50 miles away and it didn’t pay to deliver to them in person.

I’m lucky in that we live relatively close to the Ruckheims. Some customers have driven to their house, he said, but in-person pickups remained impractical for many.

In one of those head-scratching bureaucratic contradictions, Minnesota law didn’t prevent customers from ordering CBD products from outside the state. So Minnesotans could get edible hemp products shipped to them from a company in South Carolina, for instance, but not from someone in Minnesota.

To add to the perplexity, Minnesotans can get wine shipped to their homes, while CBD products aren’t even intoxicating. The CBD oil my husband uses contains low levels of THC, but not enough to produce a high. It comes from industrial hemp, not the hemp variety used to produce marijuana, and a state inspector tests Ruckheim’s crops every year to make sure the THC content meets allowable levels.

The ban was challenged by a group of hemp retailers, including a rural cannabis business, Crested River Cannabis Co. of Morgan in southwestern Minnesota.

“For rural hemp businesses like ours, shipping is not a luxury; it’s essential to reaching customers across the state,” said Crested River owner Leili Fatehi, a lobbyist who led the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Minnesota.

Many retailers had continued to ship, she said, arguing that state law did not support the agency’s ban on shipping. She called Thursday’s decision a win against agency overreach.

Hemp businesses must still verify a customer’s age and that they are not visibly intoxicated before selling hemp products to them, the agency said. This last requirement strikes me as profoundly absurd. The law doesn’t spell out how intoxication is to be determined. In her ruling, Judge Kristien Butler suggested there are other ways than in-person delivery, such as video conferencing software.

If that doesn’t work, here are my ideas: Maybe retailers could require online customers to breathe into a breathalyzer before clicking “buy.” Or disqualify them for misspellings in their purchase order. Sheriously!

Or ... lawmakers could delete the requirement entirely. That’s maybe more feasible.

The clock had been ticking on Ruckheim’s CBD products, which have a two-year shelf life. He also has an April 1 deadline to sell his 1500-milligram bottles of CBD oil before the new cap of 1000 milligrams kicks in. Much of Ruckheim’s CBD oil was packaged before the law changed.

“It puts us back on the map,” he said.

Let’s hope nobody talks the Legislature into enacting a shipping ban. Local CBD producers have been mailing their products for several years, and a ban would punish Minnesota producers, especially those in rural parts of the state.