Last week was a landmark week for cannabis reforms in Michigan, and like a Clint Eastwood movie, there was some good, some bad and a whole lot of ugly. The amount of bad and ugly in these bills is enough to turn the stomach of a New York City coroner, but for patients who lack access to medical cannabis products that are safe and consistent, the good in these bills by far outweighs all the criticisms of those who think the bills needed more work and contain way too much red tape.
Today there are over 200,000 registered patients being served by some 35,000 caregivers, that’s a more than 5 to 1 ratio and a caregiver is only permitted to service a maximum of 5 patients. Many caregivers are already servicing the maximum number of patients the law allows while other caregivers are having a difficult time even finding patients to service, and a large number of patients also grow their own cannabis, but there is a significant number of patients who don’t grow and who don’t have or can’t find a caregiver, and have virtually no access to medical cannabis treatment options in their own areas.
That’s why there is some good in these bills. However over-regulated and burdensome these bills are, and however much that labyrinth of red tape inflates prices, it’s easy to imagine thousands of new medical cannabis businesses providing broad statewide access to products and services by the end of 2018. The state will have one year to begin the application process from the date the Governor signs the bill, House Bill 4209 of 2015, a bill he has indicated he will sign maybe as soon as next Friday. Under that scenario and if the state is diligent processing applications, it’s possible that the first crops could be harvested somewhere around the beginning of 2018 with retail sales starting shortly thereafter.
That’s a huge positive for patients whose present access to medical cannabis is limited or non-existent including people new to cannabis and especially pediatric patients. Inhaling burning plant material is not how many patients prefer to ingest cannabis and the passage of these bills will open up the field for hundreds of treatments options made from a multitude of strains and offering a wide range of THC and CBD ratios. Additionally those products will be produced under strict guidelines and be tested for any contaminants including chemicals and heavy metals so patients can be assured they are buying safe products with accurate dose consistency. That’s a gigantic step forward for patients who need medical cannabis treatment options, and for them, the inflated prices are better than the lack of access they have now.
There is also some good news for patients and caregivers who wish to make extractions and cannabis-infused products for themselves or their patients, you will soon be authorized to manufacture those products yourself with some restrictions. Additionally, patients and caregivers will also soon be permitted to possess and transport extracts and cannabis-infused products if they are able to untangle the web of new regulations that govern the possession and transportation of these products including labels, packaging and manifests.
One final ray of sunshine for patients and caregivers is their apparent ability to transfer or sell marihuana seeds or seedlings to a grower licensed under the Medical Marihuana Facilities Licensing Act. While patients and caregivers are not authorized to sell any raw cannabis or cannabis-infused products to provisioning centers, other patients or other caregivers, they will be permitted to sell seeds and clones to cultivators and retailers.
It’s just too bad that all those positives have to be tarnished by all the bad provisions that were part of these bills. At the top of this heap of steaming bovine feces are provisions that authorize and mandate the use of a secured transporter to shuffle cannabis between medical cannabis businesses. The secured transport provisions are so onerous because the cannabis must be transported sometimes multiple times before it reaches the store’s shelf.
After a batch of plants are harvested, samples must be taken and transported to a safety compliance facility for testing. I imagine this will be a one-way trip and growers will send just enough sample for testing because they wouldn’t dare pay a big transport bill for the return of a few grams of untested material. Next, the grower has to transport raw cannabis to processing centers and retail outlets. Processing facilities will then do their thing and produce extracts that must be transported for a second time to a safety compliance facility and then transported to provisioning centers. There will also be returns that must be transported from the provisioning center back to the processor or the grower. The secured transport requirement could ultimately inflate a products final retail price by as much as 50%!
And still there’s more! The foundation of this whole steaming pile of poo is a seed-to-sale tracking requirement for every plant propagated by a cultivation facility. Legislators have implemented this requirement obviously to enable a thriving black market because when you add the increased manpower required to comply with seed-to-sale tracking, and stack that on top of secured transport, how can the end result be anything but much higher costs for patients?
And then there’s the gratuitous giveaway to our brave men and women in law enforcement, a new provision that requires patients and caregivers to label packages and provide product manifests while transporting cannabis-infused products. WTF does that even mean? I guess it means that law enforcement will have a field day writing $250 civil infraction tickets to patients and caregivers who improperly transport cannabis-infused products.
And that’s just the bad stuff on Thursday! Wednesday, now on Wednesday the cannabis community took a real ass whoppin! On Wednesday, both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court declined to hear MILEGALIZE’s appeal that would have given voters an opportunity to legalize cannabis in Michigan. That effort was undermined and disenfranchised by the legislature and the courts who did everything in their power to keep legalization off the 2016 ballot.
Those are just the bad highlights from a week that was the culmination of several years of work to get a dispensary bill passed, the end of a 2016 dream for MILEGALIZE and any way you look at it, a landmark week in Michigan cannabis reform. The only remaining noteworthy bad highlight of the week was the way some advocates delighted in the opportunity to say, “I told you so”, or take a cheap shot at someone who put their heart, soul, loyalty and faith into an dream that almost wiped out cannabis prohibition in this state as we know it!
And as bad as all that was, there were also some downright ugly highlights as well like the shameless pandering to law enforcement interests in these bills. They played hardball and the broker, Senator Rick Jones who happens to be a retired Eaton County Sheriff with over 30 years on the force, gladly cut them in for a hefty piece of the action. In addition to the reams of civil infraction citations cops will write, which are both bad and ugly, Senator Jones also saw fit to give law enforcement up to 15% of the excise tax collected on medical cannabis sales! It pays to have friends in high places, especially if you’re a cop! But even that’s wasn’t good enough for some cops. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and a few of his peers in other jurisdictions wanted more and are threatening to ask the Governor to veto the bills! Talk about chutzpah! And they wonder why the community doesn’t support them anymore.
The process that shaped these bills was beyond ugly, it was grotesque! It started 6 or 7 years ago when a group of advocates, some of them dispensary owners and some who where patients and caregivers, appealed to legislators to draft and pass a bill that would allow caregivers to sell excess cannabis to dispensaries which would broaden access for patients. Somewhere between there and last Thursday a hundred lobbyists got involved and these bills became a Christmas tree for special interests from every corner of Michigan government. Beneficiaries include law enforcement, counties, cities, townships, an $8.5 million gift to LARA to create the framework, plus a 30% cut of the taxes to the state! I guess it simply took that long to hang so much on one bill!
But perhaps the ugliest thing about last week was my realization of how much our legislators really don’t like cannabis consumers. I mean the way things unfolded last week with denials and obstruction and then the unusual way these bills passed immediately after those denials was like a scene from another movie, Kill Bill with Senator Jones playing The Bride and taking the heads off all who challenged him/her. It was truly breathtaking and it taught me that when you go up against the big boys, you better have your boots strapped tight and your reflexes better be quick because you never know when a Senator Bride will take a swing at you!
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