Star Tribune
Minnesota Senate passes marijuana legalization bill
The Minnesota Senate cast its first-ever vote to legalize recreational marijuana on Friday, pushing the proposal closer to becoming law than ever before.
Senators passed the DFL-led marijuana bill on a 34-33 vote, with all Democrats voting for it and all Republicans opposing it. The House approved its marijuana bill on Tuesday. Both the House and Senate bills now head to a conference committee where their differences will be reconciled into a final version.
“Minnesotans are ready. Attitudes are changing. Now is our time to undo decades of ineffective and damaging prohibition,” said Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, who sponsored the marijuana bill and wore a bright green suit to commemorate Friday’s vote.
Republicans argued that legalizing marijuana will do more harm than good, leading to worse rates of addiction and traffic fatalities.
“This bill simply isn’t enough. Not enough for public safety, not enough for public health, and our local governments are really, really at the bad end of the stick of this,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks.
DFL Gov. Tim Walz has said he will sign the marijuana bill if it reaches his desk. Once the two bills are merged, the House and Senate will hold final votes on the compromise version.
Both bills would allow Minnesotans 21 and older to buy up to two ounces of cannabis flower, eight grams of concentrate and 800 milligrams worth of edible products at one time. Adults could also grow up to eight cannabis plants at home.
Differences to be worked out include issues around at-home marijuana possession and the tax rate for products.
Under the Senate bill, Minnesotans who grow their own marijuana could possess up to five pounds of consumable flower in their homes, while those who acquire their marijuana elsewhere could possess no more than two pounds.
The House bill imposes a private possession limit of 1½ pounds across the board.
Senate Democrats are also proposing a higher tax of 10% on cannabis products, while the House bill would enact an 8% gross receipts tax over the next four years.
The Senate bill would allow cities to cap the number of dispensaries within their limits, while the House version would not.
Freshman Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, successfully offered amendments Friday granting more money to law enforcement for drug recognition training and allowing cities to impose an even tighter cap on the number of marijuana businesses within their limits.
Hauschild pitched another amendment that would have increased the proposed tax on cannabis products from 10% to 12%, and then phased up that rate by 1% each year starting in 2028 until it reached 20%. That amendment failed, with both Democrats and some Republicans expressing concern that a higher tax could keep the black market alive.
“If the state of Minnesota approaches this and makes it so expensive and so costly and adds so much tax to it, then we might have the unintended consequence of exacerbating that illicit market even more, which we know is not going to go away entirely,” said Sen. Zach Duckworth, R-Lakeville.
DFL Sen. John Hoffman of Champlin successfully amended the bill to increase funding for addiction prevention, treatment and recovery.
Republican senators said the marijuana bill isn’t ready for prime time. They said more resources are needed to address negative impacts on public health and highway safety, and cities need more regulatory controls.
“We don’t have a reliable road test — that is key — for driving under the influence of cannabis,” Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, said during a Friday morning news conference. “Our law enforcement are against this bill.”
Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten, DFL-St. Paul, said legalizing marijuana is a “racial justice issue” for people who have cannabis-related convictions on their records. Expunging those Minnesotans’ convictions, she said, would make a “world of difference” for them.
The bill would automatically expunge misdemeanor marijuana charges and form a committee to consider expungement of felony-level cannabis crimes.
“People should know that these convictions have a long, lingering effect on people’s lives,” Verbeten said. “This is what this bill is about. It’s about writing those past wrongs.”
Star Tribune
Palestinian officials say an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza killed 15
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on a school sheltering the displaced in northern Gaza on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the Abu Hussein school in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza where Israel has been waging a major air and ground operation for more than a week.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the ministry’s emergency unit in northern Gaza, confirmed the toll and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties.
“Many women and children are in critical condition,” he said.
The Israeli military said it targeted a command center run by both militant groups inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.
Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.
Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.
Twin Amur tigers born at Como Zoo in August now have names — Marisa and Maks.
Two long-time volunteers who have worked with zookeepers to care for and teach the public about the zoo’s big cats came up with the names, the first to be born at the St. Paul zoo in more than 40 years.
Marisa, a name that the volunteers found to mean “spirited and tenacious,” call that a perfect reflection of her personality. The name also carries special significance for the Como Zoo community, as it honors a retired zookeeper of the same name who was instrumental in the care of large cats during her 43 years at the zoo, Como Zoo and Conservatory Director Michelle Furrer said.
The male cub has been named Maks, which is associated with meanings like “the greatest” or “strength and leadership.” The volunteers felt this was an apt description of the male cub’s confident demeanor and growing sense of leadership, Furrer said.
“Marisa and Maks aren’t just names; they’re a fun reminder of the passion and care that keep us committed to protecting wildlife every day,” Furrer said.
The newborns and their first-time mother, 7-year-old Bernadette, remain off view to allow for more bonding time, zoo officials said. The cubs’ father, 11-year-old Tsar, has been a Como resident since February 2019 and remains on view.
Fewer than 500 Amur tigers — also known as Siberian tigers — remain in the wild as they face critical threats from habitat loss, poaching and human-wildlife conflict, the zoo said.
Much of the wood waste in the metro area is sent to a processing site near Pig’s Eye Lake in St. Paul, where it is stored before being burned to produce energy at the St. Paul Cogeneration plant downtown.
Cogeneration provides power to about half of downtown and was originally built to manage elm-tree waste in response to Dutch elm disease. The plant burns approximately 240,000 tons of wood each year, according to Michael Auger, senior vice president of District Energy in St. Paul.
Jim Calkins, a certified landscape horticulturalist who has been involved in discussions about the problem, said he thinks using wood for energy is the most logical solution.
“The issue is, we don’t have enough facilities to be able to handle that, at least in the Twin Cities,” Calkins said. “So there has to be dollars to support transportation to get the wood to those places, or in some cases, to upgrade some of those facilities such that they are able to burn wood.”
Plans are in place to convert Koda Energy in Shakopee to burn ash wood, which could potentially handle around 40,000 tons of wood waste, but that would take around two years to establish, according to Klapperich.
In some areas of the state, cities have resorted to burning excess wood waste because they felt they had no other option. Open burning wood releases a lot of carbon into the air, Klapperich said.
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