Medical Marijuana in Michigan
There are no medical marijuana storefronts in Petoskey or Charlevoix, while several dispensaries compete for customers in Traverse City, Kalkaska and Gaylord. In Wexford County, five marijuana businesses were recently raided by police and shut down.
Why do medical pot shops thrive in one town and not exist in another? Jesse Williams, an attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases, asks himself that all the time.
“Some dispensaries are open and some aren’t and some have been raided multiple times and some have never been,” Williams said. “Tell me how this isn’t selective enforcement?”
WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES…
Marijuana businesses exist in a legal netherworld, somewhere between street corner dope slingers and upstanding chamber of commerce members.
In some communities, whether they exist at all comes down to how prosecutors interpret what’s happened in the courts and legislature.
The confusion dates back to a Michigan Supreme Court ruling issued February 2013 that effectively outlawed the sale of medical marijuana through dispensaries.
The justices decided the 2008 voter-supported medical marijuana initiative did not authorize dispensaries. Medical marijuana users would have to grow their own or get it from a caregiver who could supply a maximum of five patients.
This would seem to have signaled the end of those pot-leaf decorated businesses where “budtenders” peddled strains branded with names like Venom and Super Lemon Skunk.
But just as the courts were tamping down medical marijuana sales, the state House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to legalize dispensaries — a signal to some in law enforcement to back off.
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