Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bureaucracy
By: The Guy Who Applied for Five Hemp Licenses and Lived to Tell the Tale
The Date That Haunts My Dreams: October 31
For most people, Halloween means candy, costumes, and pretending to like pumpkin spice.For hemp business owners in Minnesota, it meant something far scarier — OCM licensing day.
That’s right. The date when the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) decided to play “Who Wants to Be a Licensed Hemp Company?” with an online portal that makes 1999 dial-up websites look reliable.
I’m not exaggerating when I say it felt like a government-sponsored escape room — only instead of finding clues, you’re finding new reasons to scream.
The Setup: Five Licenses, Three Amigos, and Zero Chill
Let’s start here: Nothing But Hemp group of organizations needed 5 licenses .
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Manufacturing
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Retail (our beverage focused store)
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Hemp Stores (Stores)
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Wholesale
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Delivery (because somebody’s gotta bring it all together)
Each of these needed its own license. Because apparently, “common sense” wasn’t an option on the form.
So, like a contestant on a very boring game show, I sat down to fill out five separate applications.
Five different logins.
Five different ways to question my life choices.
The Portal From Hell
The OCM licensing site was like an ex who just won’t let you move on — every time you think you’re done, it drags you back for more pain.
You’d fill out a page, hit save, and boom — nothing saves. It would time out like a teenager ghosting your text.
We lost entire pages of data multiple times. At one point, our lawyer, operations team, and I were all huddled over screens like it was a NASA launch — only to watch the site freeze mid-upload.
If I had a dollar for every time I yelled “WHY IS THIS QUESTION EVEN HERE?” I could buy another hemp company… and then regret that too.
A Full-Body Government Exam
Look, I understand compliance. I get it. Manufacturing should follow GMP. Retailers should be vetted.
But this? This was like a rectal exam for the hemp industry.
They wanted everything — floor plans, SOPs, trade secrets, blood type, childhood trauma (okay, maybe not that last one, but it felt close).
We uploaded everything. It felt like handing over the keys to Fort Knox.
For a product that’s federally legal, it sure felt like we were being treated like we were cooking meth in a basement somewhere.
The Irony of “Legal”
Here’s the kicker — hemp-derived THC is federally legal.
We literally sell a legal plant extract.
But the OCM system made us feel like we were trying to sneak plutonium across state lines.
I get the need for oversight. I do. But there’s a difference between oversight and overreach. And OCM was doing yoga stretches over that line.
The Numbers Game: Where Did Everybody Go?
When I finally hit submit — at 7 p.m. on a Thursday, surrounded by caffeine, lawyers, and emotional damage — we got our numbers:
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#1684 for retail
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#74 for manufacturing (mostly breweries, probably)
Now, here’s where it gets interesting: Minnesota used to have 6,000 hemp businesses.
So… where’s everyone else?
Did they give up? Did they forget? Did they just look at the portal and decide to fake their own death?
This, my friends, looks like market consolidation — the natural outcome when a state makes licensing so confusing that only the well-lawyered survive.
The Mystery of the Missing Brand License
And then there’s the great unsolved mystery of the OCM licensing world:
What happens to brands that don’t have manufacturing facilities?
One poor company called OCM to ask, “Hey, we don’t own a lab. We just make a brand. What do we do?”
OCM basically said, “Uh… buy a manufacturing license.”
Sure — because everyone’s got an extra GMP facility lying around, right next to the broken printer and the dreams of a simpler time.
What if they don’t have a site plan? What if they’re a white-label brand?
Apparently, that’s their problem.
It’s like telling someone they can’t own a food brand unless they build their own kitchen.
The Emotional Damage (and Legal Fees)
We had our attorney on speed dial, me on caffeine IV, and our morale somewhere between “slightly broken” and “full existential crisis.”
It wasn’t just paperwork — it was a test of endurance. A regulatory triathlon where the finish line moves every 20 minutes.
By the end, I wasn’t sure if we’d earned a license or developed a mild case of PTSD.
What the Process Really Felt Like
Imagine you’re on “The Great British Baking Show,” but instead of cakes, you’re uploading site maps and the oven keeps deleting your dough.
Then Paul Hollywood walks in (in this case, the OCM) and says, “You didn’t submit your security plan in triplicate, so you’re disqualified.”
That’s about how it felt.
Lessons From the Licensing Trenches
After the digital trauma subsided, a few lessons emerged:
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Save everything offline. That “save” button is lying to you.
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Get a lawyer. The forms are a language only attorneys and wizards understand.
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Don’t do it alone. Bring snacks, caffeine, and possibly a therapist.
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Laugh often. Because if you don’t, you’ll cry.
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Expect nothing. That way you’ll never be disappointed.
What Happens Next?
Now that the dust has settled, the question remains — how many businesses made it through?
Is Minnesota’s hemp industry entering its next chapter, or did the OCM just Thanos-snap half the players out of existence?
We’ll see. But one thing’s for sure:
The survivors of the Great Minnesota Hemp Licensing Gauntlet deserve medals.
Or at least a strong hemp seltzer.
The Silver Lining
Through all the chaos, one thing stood out: Minnesota’s hemp entrepreneurs are relentless.
We’ve faced merchant bans, social media shutdowns, and banks treating us like we’re smuggling moon rocks.
And yet, here we are — still building, still innovating, still laughing in the face of paperwork.
Because at the end of the day, hemp isn’t the problem.
The problem is trying to regulate it with the same playbook used for nuclear facilities.
Final Thoughts
October 31 wasn’t just a deadline — it was a vibe.
A test of patience, a crash course in endurance, and the bureaucratic version of a haunted house.
But hey, we made it.
We got through the digital purgatory, the form failures, and the OCM’s love of “one more document.”
If you’re a Minnesota hemp business owner reading this — congratulations. You’ve officially survived the most confusing licensing rollout in hemp history.
And if you didn’t? Don’t worry. There’s always next year. (Probably.)
TL;DR: The OCM Portal Is the Real Horror Movie
It glitched.
It crashed.
It confused.
It conquered.
But we’re still here — five licenes strong (well maybe), a little traumatized, and laughing our way through the regulatory apocalypse.
Because in Minnesota, even licensing is an extreme sport.
