Trying to expand a cannabis business, surrounded by moratoriums

CROOKSTON, MINN. — In a former cellphone store at the Canna Corners operation on Main Street, customers came in and out on a summer afternoon — a young man in sandals and backpack, a retiree in a veteran's cap.

"My wife takes half a gummy every day before bedtime. It helps her sleep," said Mike Lafrance, noting his wife suffers from autoimmune complications. "For me? I drink Miller."

For longtime radio DJ John Reitmeier and his associate Casey Hammer, it's been a rocky road in getting their enterprise, Canna Corners, accepted in northwestern Minnesota.

"The council here [in Crookston] now is favorable to neutral," Reitmeier said, seated behind a laptop at his Crookston shop. "But there were people accusing me of being Satan incarnate."

Reitmeier, whose rapid-fire voice has been heard over northland airwaves for decades, can be prone to colorful speech. In late July, he sat under dueling posters, of a Hiroshige print of crashing waves and a Minnesota cannabis company, Moonlight, recalling that there was nothing cute about those early days just two summers ago, when he opened his store down the block from a bustling business district and a stone's throw from the winding Red Lake River.

At public meetings, some insinuated his business was to blame for teenagers bringing THC vape pens to school. Others thought he sold illegal products. Then there was that day the police came in — officers he knows from church.

"They triangulated around me and demanded my ID," Reitmeier said. "We've known each other for 40 years."

The interaction typifies a consternation in some local communities across Minnesota, where people can be decidedly less ready than their urban counterparts to welcome cannabis-themed businesses.

State-licensed THC products have averaged $12 million in monthly sales this year, according to tax collections from the Department of Revenue. About half of the 4,000 Minnesota businesses registered to produce or sell hemp-derived THC products are located outside the seven-county Twin Cities metro area.

But a number of municipalities and counties, including many outside the metropolitan region, pressed pause by passing moratoriums on new businesses.

That's what happened in Crookston not long after Reitmeier and Hammer opened their shop, with the green inflatable hydroponic leaf in the window. Crookston, as well as neighboring towns in the Red River Valley, including in Polk County, passed cannabis moratoriums.

Chuck Whiting, the Polk County administrator, said the county wanted clarification from the Legislature about the state's new cannabis law, which passed in the spring of 2023. The law legalized recreational marijuana and opened a pandora's box of facets, Whiting said, from business licensing to public health and safety concerns. So the county took action.

"We see this as a ship out to sail, and we're still building it," said Thief River Falls Mayor Brian Holmer, whose city passed a moratorium on cannabis businesses through the year's end. "The Legislature should've had everything set in stone before they pawned it off on us."

Sugar beets + THC

For Canna Corners, expansion has been frozen in place. Before the moratoriums were passed, Reitmeier and Hammer quickly grew, opening stores in East Grand Forks and Thief River Falls. Even after the local governments waved the caution flag, customers in these small towns started to trickle in.

Some acquaintances said they'd stop in if their small-town stores only had a back entrance.

So Reitmeier and Hammer created a new product to join the northwoods-themed edibles and medicinal tinctures on the shelves: Bud's, a soda pop combining THC and the region's sugar beets.

On a recent summer's day, pallets of the red cola cans rose in the store's corner, near a sleeping dog. On a wall, a poster displayed the confident-looking, green bear in a scarlet tophat that is the mascot of the drink for those 21 and older.

In many ways, it's an agricultural inevitability — marrying hemp-derived THC with sugar beets, the Red River Valley's most notable crop.

A museum honoring the brown, spud-like root sits at one end of Crookston. An American Crystal Sugar plant processing beets pulled from farmers' fields into table sugar churns on the other end.

Hammer emphasizes that Bud's uses Minnesota-grown sugar, not "HFC," or high-fructose corn syrup.

The spiked soda comes in 8-ounce cans, similar to Red Bull, in either cola or fruit punch flavors.

"We know that people are calorie-conscious," Reitmeier said. "You can drink this and have a Diet Coke."

His business partner noted there's a wider market for it too. Besides the three Canna Corners stores, the drink is available in a convenience store in Thief River Falls and the liquor stores in Warroad and St. Hilaire.

"Sales have been increasing organically every month," Hammer said. "The stigma's wearing off."

A Normal-ish future

More than a year after a moratorium passed across this large county buttressing North Dakota, Whiting, the Polk County administrator, sees oils on convenience store shelves throughout the area. And, he notes, the sky hasn't fallen.

"It's not a high concern for us right now," Whiting said, "No pun intended."

Still, like cartoon mascots for cigarettes a generation earlier, fears abound that cannabis products — with sleek advertising and colorful labels — may land in the hands of children or contribute to illicit activity among young adults.

Reitmeier, drawing on his customer profile, pushes back against that assertion.

"You've seen who's coming in here?" Reitmeier said. "Our people are home in bed sleeping at 9 o'clock."

Reitmeier traces his roots to sugar beet farmers in the valley. And hemp, which was processed in a facility in Morgan, Minn., was grown on his extended family's farm. Hemp was effectively legalized by the 2018 federal farm bill.

"It's just logical that we're now going into this new industry," Reitmeier said. "And the only sadness is that my dad and my grandparents can't see what we're doing now because we're carrying on something that they set in motion."

Another customer walked into the store then, explaining that he's just running an errand for his wife.

Staff writer Brooks Johnson contributed to this story.

Previous versions of this story misidentified the river winding through Crookston. It is the Red Lake River.