Minnesotans can soon legally smoke pot but not light fireworks

It's weird that Minnesotans can soon legally use marijuana but not bottle rockets and firecrackers.

On a visit to a temporary tent where sparklers and other ground-based fireworks were on sale in Richfield last week, I wasn't the only one thinking that.

"We were just having this conversation with another customer," said Joe Heinan, who with his son Jack is running the tent for 10 days leading up to July 4th. "I can't square it."

Over their first weekend, they said people often asked, "Where's the good stuff?"

Every year around this time, many Minnesotans visit our four neighboring states to buy Roman candles and packs of consumer-grade aerial fireworks. But technically, they're not supposed to. Minnesota is one of the last states in the nation where it is illegal to buy and use such fireworks.

For a long time, this seemed one of the quirks of our overly protective, overly prescriptive state. My colleague James Lileks for so many years has written about Minnesota's odd dance with fireworks that in 2020 he declared, "I have taken nearly every possible stance on the issue."

Fireworks and marijuana present the same tradeoff in economic behavior: How much should a harmful product be restricted when an outright ban creates a market anyway?

With this spring's pot vote, Minnesota joined nearly two dozen other states in minimizing the harm cannabis can do.

One side effect: the ongoing restrictions on fireworks seem priggish. Only Massachusetts keeps a tighter clamp on fireworks use, and it also permits marijuana.

I don't know what the deal is in Massachusetts, but in Minnesota it reveals a few things about how laws are made.

First, as several lawmakers have told me, fireworks advocacy doesn't fit neatly on the lists of political values that drive the two parties. In that way it's like sports betting, an issue that draws supporters and opponents from both parties but doesn't let them score political points.

And right now, said Rep. John Huot, a Democrat from Rosemount who sponsored a fireworks legalization bill in the past, "It's way below sports betting."

Second, there's not a natural constituency pushing for change. Obviously, lots of Minnesotans like fireworks, buy them and have some interest in their legalization. But they can get fireworks anyway and are rarely prosecuted for having them, so they don't push lawmakers to do anything.

"If you pay attention on the Fourth of July you'll notice that people don't care whether they're legal or not," Rep. Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said. "And if you get to a high vantage point and look across the horizon after dark on the Fourth of July, you'll see that everybody's doing it."

Daudt sponsored a bill to legalize fireworks this spring, but it didn't get a hearing in the Democrat-dominated Legislature. He thinks it will have a better chance in 2024, the second year of the biennium, when lawmakers tend to focus on policy measures rather than the budget.

Third, Minnesota has a long history of letting its hair down slowly. The state's ban on Sunday alcohol sales ended just five years ago, for instance. During a Republican-dominated session in 2012, legislators passed a bill to legalize fireworks but Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, vetoed it over concerns about fire safety.

Sen. Jason Rarick, R-Pine City, sponsored a fireworks legalization measure this spring that tackled objections brought by fire departments. His bill allows municipalities to ban firework sales and usage permanently or temporarily, such as during the kind of heat wave Minnesota has had in recent weeks.

He thinks the legislation has the potential to pass in 2024, though he's unsure where the many first-term lawmakers stand. "The fact that they just voted for marijuana legislation, they might be more open to it," Rarick said.

But first, lawmakers will have to minimize their view of the risk fireworks present just as they — and a lot of Americans — have done with the risk posed by marijuana.

To drive legalization, pot's proponents emphasized user rights, the potential for tax revenue and the prospect of righting social injustices. It was legalized in some states via simply worded propositions put to voters.

"The way that the U.S. approached cannabis legalization was premised on the idea that there are no special risks for the consumer," said Jonathan Caulkins, a public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University who just published a paper comparing fireworks and cannabis legalization.

With fireworks, many states have been influenced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which lobbied for technical, engineering-based restrictions.

"Fireworks regulations were created by professionals approaching the problem in a rational, responsible, balancing-of-considerations way, whereas cannabis legislation was anything but," Caulkins said.

Yep, we're in a weird place right now.