This week, Minnesota Cannabis College's perspective reached one of the largest readerships in the state. The Minnesota Star Tribune published an opinion piece by Kasey Kollross, an MNCC board trustee who also serves on the board of directors of the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), under the headline "To get cannabis right, regulate it. Don't repeal it."

Read the full op-ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune →

The piece starts with a vote happening halfway across the country and brings it home to Minnesota. It's worth reading in full. Here's why we think it matters, and why the argument at its center is the same one that drives our work every day.

What's happening in Massachusetts

On November 3, Massachusetts voters will decide Question 8, a ballot measure that would roll back the adult-use cannabis market voters there approved in 2016. As the op-ed lays out, the measure would end adult-use sales entirely: no licensed recreational dispensaries, no regulated cultivation, and no home cultivation. Medical cannabis would remain, but the regulated adult-use system Massachusetts spent a decade building would be dismantled.

If it passes, Massachusetts would become the first state in the country to undo a legal adult-use cannabis market by popular vote. That's the precedent at stake, and it's why people who work in cannabis policy far outside New England are watching closely.

Polling this summer has shown a majority of Massachusetts voters opposed to repeal. But ballot measures are decided by who shows up, not by who answers a pollster, and the repeal campaign has been funded almost entirely by a single national prohibitionist organization. The outcome is not a foregone conclusion.

Why a Massachusetts vote matters to Minnesota

The op-ed is clear on one point: Minnesota is not facing anything like a repeal effort. Our legal framework was built by the Legislature, it has been refined in the sessions since, and adult-use sales through Minnesota's licensed market began in September 2025.

But the arguments behind the Massachusetts repeal campaign don't stay in Massachusetts. The claims that regulation has failed, that legal access inevitably harms young people, and that the answer to a hard policy problem is to go backward travel easily. They show up in hearing rooms, in letters to the editor, and in conversations between neighbors. And they land hardest on markets that are still finding their footing.

As Kasey puts it plainly in the piece: "Minnesota's licensed market is young."

A young market is a market still being shaped. The rules are still being written and rewritten. Businesses are still opening their doors. The workforce that will run those businesses is still being trained. That is exactly the moment when the debate between "fix it" and "end it" matters most, and exactly the moment when good evidence and good-faith voices need to be in the room.

The data point that changes the conversation

The most important thing in the op-ed may be a single number.

Kasey points to a recently published University of Minnesota study showing that cannabis use among Minnesota ninth and eleventh graders dropped from roughly 13% in 2013 to 5% in 2025. That period covers the entire arc of Minnesota's cannabis policy changes: medical legalization, the arrival of hemp-derived THC products, and full adult-use legalization.

Read that again. Over the same years Minnesota expanded legal access for adults, reported youth use fell by more than half.

That finding cuts directly against one of the most common assumptions in the repeal playbook: that regulating cannabis for adults sends youth use soaring. As the op-ed notes, the Minnesota data doesn't support it.

No single study settles every question, and nobody at MNCC would claim otherwise. But this is exactly the kind of evidence that should anchor the policy debate, in Massachusetts and here at home. Regulated markets check IDs. Regulated products carry labels, testing requirements, and packaging rules. Regulated businesses answer to inspectors and can lose their licenses. The unregulated market does none of that. When the choice is between a flawed regulated system and no regulated system at all, the evidence points toward improving the one we have.

Why this argument is our argument

At Minnesota Cannabis College, "regulate, don't repeal" isn't a slogan. It's a description of our work.

MNCC is a Minnesota-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides free, equity-driven workforce training for qualified candidates for Minnesota's licensed cannabis market. Our mission is rooted in the idea of education as repair: creating real pathways into the legal industry for the communities most affected by cannabis prohibition. The people and neighborhoods that bore the heaviest costs of enforcement deserve a fair shot at the careers that legalization creates.

A regulated market only works if the people inside it know what they're doing. Every budtender who understands compliance, every cultivation technician who understands quality and safety, and every worker who knows the rules around age verification and product handling is part of what makes regulation actually function. That's the work our programs are built around:

• CanTrain powered retail and dispensary operations track, funded through Minnesota DEED, prepares students for customer-facing roles where responsible sales and compliance happen in real time.
• CanGrow powered cultivation track, supported by the Office of Cannabis Management, prepares students for the growing side of the industry, where product quality and safety begin.
• The MNCC Job Board connects trained workers with employers across the state, free of charge.

Since launching, MNCC has trained nearly 50 graduates. Each of them represents something the repeal argument tends to leave out: a real person with a real job in a real, regulated industry. When a legal market disappears, those jobs don't transform into something better. They disappear too, and the demand they served goes back underground.

A voice in the room

Kasey's op-ed is part of a broader commitment at MNCC to showing up in the public conversation with evidence, experience, and a clear point of view. It's not the first time MNCC leadership has appeared in the Star Tribune's pages. Our Board Chair and Program Director, Dr. Clemon Dabney, who holds a PhD in cannabis molecular genetics from the University of Minnesota, also contributes to the Star Tribune as a columnist.

That kind of presence matters. Policy debates about cannabis have too often been shaped by people with no firsthand stake in the outcome: people who never worked in the industry, never trained for it, and never lived with the consequences of prohibition. MNCC's board brings decades of experience in cannabis, education, science, and community work, and we believe those perspectives belong in public view.

What Minnesota can learn from this moment

The Massachusetts vote is a reminder that legalization isn't a finish line. A legal market has to keep earning public trust, and that trust is built on outcomes people can see: safe products, responsible sales, fair access to jobs and ownership, and honest data about what's working and what isn't.

Minnesota has a chance to get this right from the start. That means:

• Investing in the workforce. A market is only as responsible as the people running it day to day. Training is one of the most direct ways to make regulation work on the ground.
• Following the evidence. When data like the University of Minnesota study shows declining youth use under a regulated system, that finding deserves a central place in policy discussions.
• Keeping equity at the center. Legalization was supposed to repair some of the harm prohibition caused. Pathways into the industry for impacted communities aren't an add-on; they're part of the promise.
• Improving rather than retreating. Every young market has problems. The answer to a regulatory gap is a better regulation, not a return to a system with no rules at all.

That's the case the op-ed makes, and it's the case MNCC will keep making, in classrooms, in the community, and in the public square.

Read it, share it, join us

If you care about how cannabis policy gets made in Minnesota and beyond, here's how you can help:

1. Read the full op-ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune. Reading and sharing directly from the source helps show editors that this conversation matters to Minnesotans.
2. Share it with your network. Forward it to a friend in Massachusetts, post it on LinkedIn, or bring it up the next time someone assumes legalization has been a failure.
3. Subscribe to the MNCC newsletter for updates on our programs, graduates, and the policy conversations shaping Minnesota's licensed market.
4. Support MNCC's work. Our training is free for eligible applicants to students because of donors and partners who believe in education as repair.
5. Browse the MNCC Job Board if you're looking to start or grow a career in Minnesota's regulated cannabis industry.

Regulation isn't perfect. But it's the only approach that gives us the tools to make things better. That's worth defending in Massachusetts, and it's worth building on here at home.