Trying to expand a cannabis business, surrounded by moratoriums

CROOKSTON, MINN. — In a former cellphone store at the Canna Corners operation on Main Street, customers came in and out on a summer afternoon — a young man in sandals and backpack, a retiree in a veteran’s cap.

“My wife takes half a gummy every day before bedtime. It helps her sleep,” said Mike Lafrance, noting his wife suffers from autoimmune complications. “For me? I drink Miller.”

For longtime radio DJ John Reitmeier and his associate Casey Hammer, it’s been a rocky road in getting their enterprise, Canna Corners, accepted in northwestern Minnesota.

“The council here [in Crookston] now is favorable to neutral,” Reitmeier said, seated behind a laptop at his Crookston shop. “But there were people accusing me of being Satan incarnate.”

Reitmeier, whose rapid-fire voice has been heard over northland airwaves for decades, can be prone to colorful speech. In late July, he sat under dueling posters, of a Hiroshige print of crashing waves and a Minnesota cannabis company, Moonlight, recalling that there was nothing cute about those early days just two summers ago, when he opened his store down the block from a bustling business district and a stone’s throw from the winding river that gives the valley its name.

At public meetings, some insinuated his business was to blame for teenagers bringing THC vape pens to school. Others thought he sold illegal products. Then there was that day the police came in — officers he knows from church.

“They triangulated around me and demanded my ID,” Reitmeier said. “We’ve known each other for 40 years.”

The interaction typifies a consternation in some local communities across Minnesota, where people can be decidedly less ready than their urban counterparts to welcome cannabis-themed businesses.