A year after legalization, where you can and can’t smoke pot in Minnesota is still a little hazy

Despite being legal for months, it was still kind of surreal to see people openly smoking marijuana in public recently, and smell the pungent clouds surrounding them. A small crowd of smokers at the Northern Haze Festival puffed on bongs and other glass pipes under a tent in a parking lot on a sweaty Duluth Saturday in early July.

Matthew Johnson, a 26-year old retail worker from Duluth who describes himself as an avid marijuana smoker, had come to the event outside a popular brewery to celebrate the nearly one-year anniversary of the legalization of cannabis in Minnesota.

“There’s the older generations and younger generations coming together over something where it means love,” he said, looking around at others partaking underneath the festival’s “consumption tent.”

Vendors weren’t selling cannabis at the event. The state Office of Cannabis Management hasn’t started licensing retailers yet. But it’s been legal to grow, use and possess cannabis since last August. So instead, the festival was BYOC: Bring Your Own Cannabis.

“For way too many years, you know, our cannabis friends and connoisseurs have been hiding in their basement, in back alleys, some people ashamed of one of the things that they enjoy,” said Josh Wilken-Simon, who organized the festival.