Lansing — Gov. Rick Snyder signed emergency rules Monday allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to stay open after Dec. 15 without affecting their chances of getting a state license in certain circumstances.
Under one of dozens of new medical marijuana administrative rules Snyder approved, marijuana pot shops that were approved by their local municipal government prior to Dec. 15 can stay open until the state issues or denies them a license. That’s the same date dispensaries, growers and other pot enterprises can submit applications to the state to operate legally.
A 2013 Supreme Court decision ruled that dispensaries are illegal under state law. But many in Ann Arbor, Detroit and Lansing have not been targeted by State Police, while regional narcotics teams led by the state agency have cracked down in other areas of Michigan.
A 2016 overhaul to the state’s 2008 voter-approved Medical Marihuana Act allowed the department to craft the new rules as Michigan tries to transition to a fully legal medical marijuana business nearly 10 years later.
According to the order, not issuing the emergency rules would “have a detrimental effect on the necessity for access to a safe source of marihuana for medical use and the immediate need for growers, processors, secure transporters, provision centers, and safety compliance facilities to operate under clear requirements.”
The emergency rules are aimed at keeping existing medical marijuana shops open temporarily, so long as they’ve also received local government approval. They come after a member of a state board charged with issuing licenses originally threatened this summer to close them down.
The new emergency rules also established what many in the industry consider to be hefty start-up capital requirements. Growers must prove they have $150,000 to $500,000 in capital depending on the size of their farm. Dispensaries and processors must prove they have $300,000 in capital, while transporters and safety compliance businesses must have $200,000.
Applicants also must pay a $6,000 application fee and have an additional $100,000 in insurance. The rules also create product rules establishing limits for THC, the main psychoactive element in marijuana.
Michael Gerstein, The Detroit News Published 3:27 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2017 | Updated 3:46 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2017
If you are pulled over in one of five Michigan counties and a police officer believes you’re impaired by drugs, you could be asked to submit your saliva to be tested.
A Michigan State Police official explained the process for the state’s new roadside drug testing pilot program that begins Wednesday, Nov. 8, in Berrien, Delta, Kent, St. Clair and Washtenaw counties, that runs for one year.
Drug Recognition Experts (DREs), with specialized training in the signs of drug impairment, will carry handheld devices to test for the presence of drugs in drivers’ saliva.
Despite the new tool, police will continue to follow established procedures during traffic stops to check for drug impairment, MSP First Lt. Jim Flegel said.
“They’re not going to be randomly pulling people over, they have to have a valid reason,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for things like weaving in their lane, driving too fast, driving too slow, not using your turn signals — indicators that would indicate that somebody’s driving while impaired.”
After making a traffic stop, police would still have to establish probable cause for impairment, he said, by performing field sobriety tests.
“The only difference with the pilot program is if they determine they’re impaired on some type of drug, they’re going to ask them to submit to the oral fluid swab,” Flegel said.
The Alere DDS2 oral fluid test instrument will be used to measure for the presence of drugs in drivers’ saliva, Michigan State Police spokeswoman Shanon Banner said
NILES, Mich. — Michigan State Police officers are conducting roadside saliva tests on suspected drug-impaired motorists as part of a program spurring questions about the tests’ accuracy.
State Police Special First Lt. Jim Flegel told the South Bend Tribune that the program uses a portable saliva-testing device that can tell officers if there are certain drugs in a driver’s system, such as marijuana or opiates. The program will test the accuracy and reliability of the Alere DDS2 device, which is meant to assess the presence of drugs in about five minutes.
(HMMMM…..DNA Collection device?)
Law enforcement and academic experts say settling on such a test is complicated because drugs affect everyone differently and there is wide variation in the potency of pot and other drugs and the way they are consumed. As a result, there is no consensus on what level amounts to impairment.
“Nobody should be compelled to take this test until we’ve got some confirmation that it is an accurate test,” Michael Komorn said. “That’s basic fundamental liberty and freedom, that government shouldn’t be able to subject individuals to tests.”
The $150,000 program is called the Preliminary Oral Fluid Analysis. It aims to combat an increase in fatal crashes caused by drug-impaired drivers, Flegel said. Officers must have a reason to suspect impairment before testing a driver, he said. Officers have undergone a two-week training course and must follow a 12-step analysis to assess potential drug impairment.
The state saw a more than 30 percent increase in fatal crashes from 2015 to 2016. There were almost 240 fatal crashes in 2016, compared to almost 180 crashes the previous year.
The program is currently being used in five Michigan counties: Berrien, Delta, Kent, St. Clair and Washtenaw.
Police will report to the Legislature in a year about the program’s accuracy and the number of arrests. The program could be rolled out to more areas if it’s found to be effective, Flegel said.
Published: Nov 27, 2017, 10:14 am • By The Associated Press
Lansing— The road to the Michigan Capitol is lined with marijuana.
It’s almost impossible to drive to the capital dome without seeing scores of shop signs emblazoned with bright green medical crosses and plucky names — BudzRUs, TruReleaf, Best Buds, Kind Provisioning Center — all along Michigan Avenue and the city at large. A constant stream of people filter in and out of the pot shops.
In major cities such as Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Lansing and Flint, medical marijuana dispensaries are largely left alone.
In other areas, however, police follow federal and state law, in effect treating medical marijuana as an illegal narcotic and a public safety issue. Regional state police drug teams have raided and closed dispensaries with the help of county prosecutors across the state, including in Grand Traverse, Kent, Oscoda, Otsego, St. Clair and Wexford counties.
This unequal treatment occurs as Michigan implements new regulations on everything the industry does, from growing to transporting to selling. On Dec. 15, those trying to get into or stay in business can submit applications for an official state license.
It has been unclear since voters approved a 2008 referendum allowing marijuana for medical use what the state’s law actually permitted. In 2013, the Michigan Supreme Court decided that dispensaries are illegal.
But the ruling has left some communities without local access to medical pot while others have a glut. Still others face legal fees and prison.
“I’ve shed tears over this. This has never been about money for me,” said Chad Morrow, a 39-year-old Gaylord resident and former dispensary owner facing up to seven years in prison. “To have that taken away — it’s disheartening and heartbreaking, honestly.”
Although Morrow obtained permission from the Gaylord Planning Commission and the City Council to open a dispensary called Cloud 45, it was raided multiple times by a regional state police drug unit before he closed it in 2016 pending criminal charges.
Mixed messages from the state also helped inspire at least one medical marijuana crackdown in Grand Traverse County, the most recent county-wide enforcement action against dispensaries operating for years. Police sometimes conduct raids even if the prosecutor doesn’t play ball, said lawyers specializing in marijuana cases.
“I think Traverse City had the largest concentration of places north of Lansing, so it was the biggest target,” said Matt Abel, a criminal defense attorney in Detroit and an expert on marijuana cases. “Why they’re doing it now when these places have existed for years? It (makes us think) it has something to do with the upcoming licensing.
“They see this as an opportunity to clear the playing field and the patients be damned.”
Eight dispensaries closed
The prosecutor in Grand Traverse County helped close all eight of the county’s dispensaries in October after state regulators said staying open past the Dec. 15 application opening would hurt such shops’ chances of getting a license to do business legally.
In November, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs changed course and issued an emergency rule telling pot shops that staying open past mid-December wouldn’t hurt their licensing chances. But Grand Traverse County prosecutor Robert Cooney already had issued cease-and-desist letters to the four medical marijuana shops in Traverse City and four others around the county.
Capt. Michael Caldwell, State Police commander for the region, said a regional state police drug unit called Traverse Narcotics Team, or TNT, acted “because dispensaries are illegal.”
Caldwell would not say why the probe began in September when the dispensaries were open for business for years beforehand.
“No, I can’t comment on any specifics of those investigations,” he said. “Once these owners obtain legal license to operate a dispensary, then they have nothing to fear. However, until that happens, they’re in violation of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, and they’re subject to enforcement action.”
Cooney said his cease-and-desist letters were in part prodded by comments from state Michigan Medical Marihuana Licensing Board member Donald Bailey, a retired state police sergeant from Traverse City who worked in drug enforcement. At an August meeting, Bailey said he wanted to close all dispensaries before licenses were issued to be in line with the Supreme Court ruling.
Bailey’s motion was met with sustained public outcry before LARA told the board at a later meeting that it does not have the authority to shut down dispensaries.
But Bailey’s comments and LARA’s prior warning that provisioning centers could sabotage their licensing chances by staying open past the mid-December application deadline led Cooney to believe the state wanted them shuttered.
“To me, (that) indicated that the state really wants these illegally operating business shut down before the new law,” he said, indicating he thought the state and localities wanted to collect taxes and licensing fees from legal businesses under new state rules.
Cooney informed the dispensaries in his letters that state law does not allow them to sell medical marijuana. The law allows a “caregiver” to cultivate and grow medical marijuana for up to five patients.
First Lt. Josh Lator, a state police commander at the Houghton Lake Post in northern Michigan, said police have been monitoring the Grand Traverse dispensaries for some time, and “the biggest reason” they acted now was “because every one of the places that the team contacted … were operating in violation of Michigan law.”
Licensed ‘caregivers’ lacking
Although dispensaries are currently illegal, many patients have argued that finding medical pot would be difficult if all the shops closed.
Michigan lacks enough licensed “caregivers” to provide for all of its patients. There are 272,215 patients and 43,266 caregivers in Michigan — or more than six patients for every caregiver. Caregivers can only grow medical marijuana for up to five patients each.
State police spokeswoman Shanon Banner said the department keeps no statistics on its medical marijuana dispensary raids, and that enforcement occurs on a “case-by-case” basis. She declined to say why some state police units crack down on dispensaries while others don’t.
“Sometimes enforcement is the result of local ordinance; sometimes it’s related to other criminal activity,” Banner said in an email.
But dispensaries across the state sell marijuana to more than five patients without legal repercussion.
“The county prosecutors let them do it,” said Barton Morris, a Royal Oak criminal defense attorney specializing in marijuana cases.
Pro-marijuana lawyers like Abel and Morris say the patchwork of enforcement happens in the absence of centralized state police orders. They say ambitious local narcotics units such as TNT work to find county prosecutors who are willing to cooperate.
By contrast, Washtenaw County prosecutor Brian Mackie said he deals with much more pressing issues. Local police and county prosecutors are just “inundated with domestic violence, murder, rape, armed robbery,” he said.
“Marijuana is not a No. 1 priority in the county,” said Mackie, who indicated he does not favor legalizing recreational use of marijuana. “We evaluate cases that come to us. We don’t get a great many of them.”
Registered business targeted
In 2016, 12 dispensaries in Oscoda and Otsego counties were raided by regional state police narcotics task forces.
In August of that year, the owners and workers of a dispensary called Northern Michigan Caregivers in Lewiston turned themselves into police following warrants issued for their arrest on charges that stemmed from running the dispensary.
Delbert Curio, 59, ran the shop with his wife, Brandi, for nearly four years before a judge issued a search warrant following two “controlled buys” to prove the dispensary actually sells medical marijuana.
Curio even took pains to register his business with the Oscoda County Clerk, according to a state police incident report.
“Delbert and Brandi (Curio) operated the business very openly and obviously with the belief that their transactions and activities would be protected by the Michigan Medical Marijuana (sic) Act,” defense lawyer Morris wrote in a 2016 sentencing memo.
The Straits Area Narcotics Unit still seized about $2,700 in cash and all of the shop’s marijuana and marijuana derivatives, such as liquid THC and edibles. The county prosecutor initially threatened Curio with up to 50 years in prison for delivering and manufacturing marijuana, operating or maintaining a laboratory and maintaining a drug house, according to a court document.
Instead, Delbert ended up getting four years of probation and permission from a local judge to use medical marijuana to treat his advanced lung cancer.
It’s incomprehensible that state police are still busting people as other state officials attempt to work out the regulatory details that will lay the groundwork for huge profits in the marijuana industry, said Michael Komorn, a Farmington Hills-based criminal defense lawyer specializing in marijuana cases.
“It can’t be reconciled with any kind of logic,” Komorn said.
Michael Gerstein, The Detroit News Published 12:04 a.m. ET Nov. 20, 2017
I was at a meeting of the Detroit City Planning Commission when a proposed dispensary law was being discussed. One commissioner, clearly an opponent of marijuana stores, asked, “If we pass this, can we start closing these places tomorrow?”
Donald Bailey, a member of the Medical Marihuana Licensing Board that is tasked with setting up the rules for a marijuana distribution system by mid-December, did the same thing at the board’s Aug. 21 meeting. Bailey opened the meeting with a proposal to tell all dispensaries whose owners want to be considered for a state license that they have to shut down by mid-September.
Luckily, others on the five-member board decided to hear testimony from the 200 or so people at the meeting. After four hours of testimony, the four MMLB members in attendance decided to seek information from the state licensing board and the attorney general’s office before making a decision.
Bailey is a retired state police sergeant who apparently still carries a banner for the war on drugs. That’s his right, and I guess his proposal should come as no surprise. However, it’s a shame that people with that attitude — at city and state levels — are those tasked with setting up the system for patients to access marijuana. To start with, I’m pretty sure they don’t believe that marijuana is medicine, because they appear to have no concern for patients here.
If all of the dispensaries shut down in September, are the epileptics just supposed to have seizures all the time until the new system opens up in mid-December? That seems to have been the attitude of legislators and law enforcement in Michigan since the medical marijuana law passed nine years ago. They basically said, “Well, the law says you can have this stuff, but it doesn’t say you can have stores to supply it.”
Then, instead of fixing that, they demurred, hemmed, hawed, blocked, arrested, ruined lives, and tried everything possible to take down legal patients, including reportedly pressuring the state crime lab to classify extracts in a manner that allowed prosecutions. (Thank you attorney Michael Komorn for exposing that.)
In the face of a medical marijuana law created by a vote of the people, the state amended the war on drugs to include a war on patients.
Another reason I think that much of our government leadership doesn’t believe marijuana is medicine is that in all of the legislating that has been done, there has been nothing calling for medical qualifications or standards — or anything else regarding the medical side of this. (Americans for Safe Access has a Cannabis Care Certification program you can learn about at CannabisCareCertification.org.)
So far, the laws that have been passed set up a system that’s more about law enforcement and who gets paid. We haven’t yet seen what the MMLB will come up with, but we know there are going to be licenses that will have to be paid for by growers, processors, transporters, and retail sales at the state and local level. Then the state gets tax revenue too, although I don’t begrudge that.
The city of Warren charges $2,500 to dispensary applicants just to process the application. In Detroit, a Caregiver Center license costs $1,470.70. However, there’s a $160 site plan review fee, $1,000 for a conditional hearing, and $2,276 for an annual Detroit Health Department inspection, in addition to a few other charges.
Money is the main incentive the state has to put its system together — not compassion for patients, not the will of the people, not doing the right thing. So it should be no surprise that this is the system that’s coming down the pike.
There are plenty of activists who want to make money somewhere in this system. And the vast majority of the people who have started dispensaries want to turn a profit. They got into the business early in order to already be there when the state came around. A lot of them got busted, incurred huge legal fees, and some went to jail. Who knows — they may be penalized for it in the long run.
I don’t think they should be penalized, but even more so I don’t think patients should be penalized — which is going to be the end result if retail outlets have to shut down.
This whole shutdown suggestion has me wondering if there are other — preferred — vendors they want to make room for. MMLB Chair Rick Johnson (a former Republican state speaker of the House) was praised by the Michigan Responsibility Council when he was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder back in May. But the MRC was the front for a group of investors who, a few years back, were trying to get a system of legal marijuana in which they controlled all production and sales. Now, the MRC opposes the 2018 ballot effort to “regulate marijuana like alcohol” because it’s the “wrong” kind of system.
Hmm. I wonder if the “right” kind of system is one where they control everything?
There does need to be a system for marijuana regulation. The state has dragged its feet for far too long, and the lack of a clear vision in Lansing has left the system vulnerable to ideologues like Bailey and profiteers like Johnson. And nobody seems to be particularly concerned about the patients.
Looks like we’re going to get something that mimics the for-profit medical care system we already have in place.
Closure has already hit the Reef, a caregiver center on Eight Mile Road that shut down on Sunday because owners anticipated having to apply for state certification. In a press release sent last week, the Reef announced that “all indications are that the Board will eventually vote in favor of closing all dispensaries in Michigan until each one is licensed through the State.”
The Reef is already certified to operate in Detroit, a spokesperson told me, saying, “We don’t know what the board is going to do. We don’t know what authority they have to do any of this. But we’re doing everything in anticipation. We did the same thing with the city of Detroit. We also complied to the terms the city set out.”
Regarding patients, the spokesperson said: “Our plan is to reopen with state licensing. We’re hoping that they can find their medicine elsewhere. … This is a temporary situation to make sure we’re there for the long haul.”
I guess we could see a lot of this across the state.
Despite all that, folks who wish to pursue their dream of starting a marijuana-related business may want to check out the marijuana business seminar scheduled for Friday, Sept. 22 at Cobo Center. Sponsored by the Royal Oak-based Cannabis Legal Group, the seminar will focus on licensing, testing, and business operations.
