Reported in the Detroit Free Press
Feb 1, 2019
As Michigan enters the new world of legal recreational cannabis, some long-time holdouts in law enforcement are expected to stand down.
Although 63 percent of Michigan voters approved medical marijuana in 2008, Bouchard has been a leader, along with former Michigan Attorney General Bill Schutte, in quashing efforts in the decade since then to allow sales outlets for medical marijuana.
That’s a one of the reasons why dozens of the outlets called dispensaries sprung up along the south side of Eight Mile Road in Detroit in Wayne County.
Now, it looks like even Bouchard must yield to the tide of legal cannabis after Michigan voters in November legalized the recreational use of marijuana.
On Friday, a shop billed as Oakland County’s “first licensed dispensary” opened in Walled Lake.
Angie Roullier has muscular dystrophy and she said that “cannabis really changed my life” after she weaned herself from three decades of prescription drugs.
The opening comes a decade after Bouchard ordered undercover officers from OAKNET — the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team — to gather evidence prior to a police raid of what then-Ferndale Mayor Craig Covey said was the county’s first dispensary, called Clinical Relief.
That shop had opened with the Ferndale City Council’s enthusiastic approval. But the ill-fated venture never reopened after OAKNET officers arrested more than two dozen people at the site.
In Walled Lake, the City Council has been equally enthused about the opening of the Greenhouse on Pontiac Trail. And the new outlet’s CEO, Jerry Millen, said he doesn’t expect trouble from Sheriff Bouchard or the county’s narcotics investigators, after he paid $66,000 for a state license and gained full approval to open under the state’s new law.
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THE REAL QUESTION: IS OAKLAND COUNTY READY?
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