Recreational marijuana legal Aug. 1, with these restrictions

Recreational legalized Tuesday in Minnesota

Although marijuana is set to become legal in Minnesota at midnight, there will still be restrictions on where you can use it and how much you can have.

(FOX 9) - Legal recreational marijuana will light up Minnesota when the clock strikes midnight.

But it won’t be legal everywhere.

What you can buy and where you can smoke will be limited.

Legally buying marijuana will still be pretty tough. You’ll have to go to Red Lake tribal land about 200 miles from here.

But once you have it, you might be surprised by where you can smoke it.

A walk around Bde Maka Ska kept Patty Diamond relaxed Monday. By Tuesday, puffs of marijuana smoke could cloud the same trail.

"I mean if it’s like a whole smoky corridor that could not be so comfortable," Diamond said.

Minneapolis parks are an outlier when it comes to legal cannabis smoking.

Under the law passed in May, you can’t use it when you’re driving or at almost any indoor public places — not even at First Avenue, which will host a celebratory "Legalized It" event Tuesday.

There’s no smoking at schools or anywhere else it can be inhaled by minors, or on federal property.

"Anywhere that you can’t smoke cigarettes, it’s a good bet that you can’t smoke or vape cannabis products either," said Leili Fatehi of the marijuana marketing company Blunt Strategies.

Until January 2025, the state law allows local governments to set all kinds of cannabis rules, so several cities are considering bans on smoking in all public places.

Combined with the law’s ban on smoking inside multi-family housing, some advocates say it extends the prohibition and could unfairly continue to damage people of color and people with lower incomes.

"We do not want a situation where we are criminalizing the consumption of cannabis for individuals that are renters living in multi-family housing," Fatehi said.

Marijuana seeds are already legal in Minnesota and starting Tuesday, you can plant them indoors to grow up to eight plants.

Back at the lake, Diamond expects calm to prevail, but not before some chaos.
"I think it’ll have to just play itself out, but I think people are going to go completely nuts tomorrow and for the next few days," she said on Monday.

The first retailers will be on tribal land — first at Red Lake and later in August at White Earth, possibly followed later by other tribes.

The state doesn’t plan to hand out the first retail licenses until early 2025.