While Minnesota’s cannabis industry wades through regulations, Wisconsin’s accelerates without many

That summer, the owners had to pull many of their products from shelves to comply with Minnesota’s low-dose edible regulations. And when they opened an Uptown Minneapolis location in 2023, regulators eventually nixed their THCA flower and vapes for similar reasons.

State regulators have destroyed more than 190 pounds of cannabis flower taken from retail stores, about $578,000 worth, according to Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM).

Those run-ins led Thompson and Johnson to open their 200-square-foot location in Hudson, Wis. Because of the lack of rules there, they can sell many of the same products they used to offer in Minnesota, including cannabis flower, high-dose edibles, THC vapes and pre-rolls. According to Johnson, the Wisconsin location outperforms its other two stores with about 30% more revenue since it opened in April 2024.

“It was a way for us to service this customer base that we had earned their trust for a long time,” Thompson said, “and give them a place they can still come get product that’s safe, that’s tested, that they can be comfortable buying and that they’re familiar with.”

If hemp-derived THC products were a pre-legalization loophole in Minnesota, THCA is an exercise in interpretation in Wisconsin. Technically, labs should test TCHA for that 0.3% threshold only after it has converted to delta-9 from heating. But that’s not completely clear in the farm bill, meaning people can purchase TCHA products in Wisconsin, for example, that are way stronger than the 0.3% threshold after heating.

“I suppose it’s a gray-area industry, and I guess it has been since the farm bill passed,” Thompson said. “But all we’re going to do is make sure that we’re providing the best quality products that we can within the market that’s being serviced.”