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GVL Photo Illustration / Brian B. Sevald

State debates regulation of medical marijuana industry

By Dan Michniewicz GVL Web Managing Editor
1/31/2010

The Grand Rapids City Commission decided Tuesday that commercial dispensaries would not play a role in the distribution of medicinal marijuana within the state's second largest city.

The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act of 2008, which allows registered individuals with qualifying medical conditions to use the drug for certain medicinal purpose with no criminal penalties, does not include provisions to govern marijuana dispensaries. As a result, the state's communities and lawmakers are scrambling to find ways to regulate its medicinal marijuana industry.

Some public officials worry about the safety of the patients and caregivers under the current system, in which marijuana is grown and sold out of the home.

"There is nobody looking out for the patients," said Suzanne Schulz, Grand Rapids' planning director.

The City Commission is reviewing propositions that would treat the businesses similar to home-based music teachers.

Schulz said Grand Rapids law enforcement can monitor and safeguard home-based medicinal marijuana businesses better than storefront dispensaries.

"What we are trying to do is provide management so (the police) know where these homes are going to be," Schulz said. "If these people are legal and they have their card, then we can leave them alone."

Some communities, such as Hazel Park, have considered allowing pot shops or "compassion clubs," arguing they are a unique opportunity to boost a city's economy. But the act does not include provisions to govern commercial dispensaries, so cities cannot tax them.

"The economic advantage people talk about -- it's not there for the city," Schulz said.

Senator Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, and other Senate Republicans have introduced bills that would drastically alter the way the state regulates medicinal marijuana. The legislation would administer only 10 growers permits per year and require medicinal marijuana patients receive a prescription for the drug from a physician.

"To get the marijuana into the hands of those who need it, we thought it made sense to have it dispensed like other pharmaceutical drugs," Kuipers said.

The senators' plan would also reschedule marijuana as a schedule II drug, something no state has ever done before. Schedule II drugs are defined as having some legitimate medical use.

However, marijuana would remain a schedule I, or medically illegitimate, drug in the eyes of the federal government. This poses a serious obstacle to the senators' legislation.

"Requiring physicians and pharmacies to prescribe and dispense marijuana would put their licenses at risk," said James McCurtis, spokesman for Michigan's Department of Community Health.

Agreeing with Schulz, Kuipers said he is concerned with the safety of the patients under the current system. He said moving growing operations out of people's homes and into large-scale greenhouses would provide a safer alternative.

"If a criminal finds out you are growing, you can find your property vandalized (or) yourself robbed," he said "... There is a lot of possibility for some real trouble unless we come up with some solutions."

Kuipers recently announced his intentions to run for the Michigan's 2nd Congressional District seat Pete Hoekstra will abandon when the latter runs for governor. Some of the bills' critics said Kuipers' focus on medicinal marijuana is in an appeal to the district's conservative Republican base.

Ben Zito, an active member of Grand Valley State University's chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said Kuipers and his colleagues are playing the system and trying to make medicinal marijuana less accessible to patients.

"These bills are a clever way to circumvent the people's decisions made in November 2008," Zito said.

Kuipers said it is not his intent to circumvent the will of Michigan's voters.

"(The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act) was a citizen initiative," Kuipers said. "Sixty-three percent of voters decided this was the direction they wanted to take."

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