EDITORIAL: Mount Pleasant officials should consider new medical marijuana laws with open minds
As Mount Pleasant city leaders consider the benefits of medical marijuana businesses in town, we have a simple request: Keep an open mind.
Mount Pleasant's city and planning commissions met for a special joint session prior to the City Commission’s regular meeting last Monday. They used the meeting to discuss how officials should handle new state laws regulating medical marijuana facilities.
In December 2016, Gov. Rick Snyder signed a series of bills clarifying the types of medical marijuana facilities allowed under Michigan law. The "Medical Marihuana Facilities Licensing Act" will create a licensing program for medical marijuana similar to how the state regulates alcohol.
Under the law, a city or township must “opt in” to let the state know it wants to have licensed medical marijuana businesses in its municipality. Residents can create a citizen's initiative to put the issue before local voters. Counties are not eligible.
The city can choose to allow:
- Growing facilities that would cultivate and process marijuana for sale. The city could authorize three designations. Class A would allow cultivation of up to 1,500 plants, Class B would allow cultivation of up to 1,000 plants or Class C would allow cultivation of up to 500 plants
- Processors that create “infused products” such as edibles
- Dispensaries that would buy marijuana from growers and supply the product to patients.
- Transportation services that would take marijuana to authorized facilities
- Facilities to monitor cannabis for contaminants and other substances
We think the city commission should approach the possibilities of these new laws with open minds.
These licensed dispensaries would be a new taxable business revenue in town and there are already too few medical marijuana facilities to meet patients' needs north of Lansing.
Allowing these businesses would conform to the city's existing progressive policy outlook. With the proper regulation, Mount Pleasant could be a regional hub for medical marijuana in Mid-Michigan.
If the city commission opts into the new laws, Mount Pleasant would be at the forefront of this budding industry. They can set their own guidelines and ordinances for provisioning centers and other businesses, like requiring a fee of up to $5,000 for each facility, require indoor growing and providing resources to prevent theft. The city essentially has the power to make these businesses play on the city's terms.
The first step to making the right decision on the new laws is tuning out the traditionally negative stigma surrounding the use of cannabis — whether smoked or taken in another form.
While there has been vast improvements in what we know about marijuana, since the U.S. made marijuana a schedule 1 controlled substance in 1990, negative stigmas persist when discussing cannabis and the medical marijuana industry.
However, there are benefits for a municipality like Mount Pleasant to normalize an industry of growing and processing a substance that is still illegal at the federal level — as scary as that might seem.
In 2016, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said "it's not like we're seeing marijuana as a specific gateway” during a speech on the causes of addiction. Instead, Lynch pointed to prescription painkillers and other prescribed opioids as the gateway leading to the heroin epidemic our nation faces.
Heroin and painkiller-related overdoses claimed the life of 1,745 Michiganders in 2014, according to the Detroit Free Press. From 2010-2012, 77 people died each year in Michigan from alcohol poisoning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Recorded overdose deaths in the U.S. from marijuana? None — ever — according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
TIME reported a study from Health Affairs in July 2016 concluding that when states legalized medical marijuana, prescriptions dropped significantly for painkillers and other drugs for which pot was an alternative.
We should encourage doctors to issue medical marijuana cards to patients and mitigate the opioid addiction crisis. Before we can do so, medical marijuana providers need to be accessible to patients with the help of city planning and robust pot politics.
Mount Pleasant residents have already shown interest in exploring the use of marijuana both medicinally and recreationally. In November 2014, 62 percent of residents voted to amend the city ordinance allowing the possession or transfer of “small amounts” of marijuana on private property by those age 21 and over.
The traditional, negative stigmas — many of which are factually incorrect or biased — cannot be deciding factors for city leaders.
As City Commissioner Lori Gillis said at Monday's meeting, our municipality should consider the possibilities of these new laws with open eyes.
This decision must be thoughtfully considered, but we ask that it be considered with open minds as well.
