Search Results: michigan/ (12)

The activists put up a long fight.

Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek.

Michigan almost certainly won’t vote on REC this year. The state’s Senate advanced regulation for MED dispensaries.

Both MED initiatives that will appear on the Arkansas ballot “ are simply recreational marijuana masquerading as medicine,” according to Jerry Cox, executive director of the conservative Christian group Family Council. If both initiatives pass, the one with more votes prevails.

It’s a controversial theory.

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

In Esquire, author Don Winslow argues that legal weed is responsible for the opiate epidemic. As demand for Mexican marijuana has fallen, The Mexican Sinaloa Cartel “increased the production of Mexican heroin by almost 70 percent, and also raised the purity level, bringing in Colombian cooks to create ‘cinnamon’ heroin as strong as the East Asian product. They had been selling a product that was about 46 percent pure, now they improved it to 90 percent.

An attorney’s opinionated rant against marijuana in a Michigan courtroom last week cost her a case, even though most seemed to agree she had won.
In her closing arguments in a case against a Michigan medical cannabis patient accused of growing more than he was allowed, Alger County prosecutor Karen Bahrman went off on a tear on the state’s medical marijuana laws, the Alger Hemp Coalition, a local cannabis advocacy group, and patients in general. She said their vision was to live in a “country where everybody can walk around stoned.”

We told you earlier this week about marijuana decriminalization measures in Berkley, Huntington Woods, Pleasant Ridge and several other towns in Michigan and suburbs of Detroit. In total, there were 11 measures scattered around the state.
Well, voters did the right thing in six of those communities last night and passed bills lowering or eliminating marijuana penalties for small amounts of cannabis.

keith Bacongo-Flickr edited by Toke of the Town.

While the national focus this week is on recreational marijuana measures in Alaska, Oregon and Washington D.C. and a medical proposal in Florida, voters in Michigan could be making small steps at the local level to end marijuana prohibition.
Marijuana proposals that would decriminalize the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by either removing the ordinances altogether or decriminalizing them to a “lowest enforcement priority” are going before voters in eleven different municipalities – including three in the metro Detroit area.

Northern Express

A Michigan cancer patient whose eviction from her federally subsidized apartment — for using medical marijuana — was halted after an outcry in 2009 now faces homelessness again.

Lori Montroy, 52, of Elk Rapids, got another eviction notice last month at the apartment where she has lived since 2008, reports Patrick Sullivan at Northern Express.
“It’s just draining the life out of me, these people,” Montroy said. “Why can’t they just leave me be?”
Montroy thought she was safe in her apartment after the last attempted eviction around Christmas 2009. The company that at that time managed the apartment complex called off the eviction in early 2010 after a storm of bad publicity and a plea from attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union. The attorneys argued that under federal law, landlords are not required to evict tenants for drug use under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act.

420 Medicated
The state of Michigan will soon have a snazzy new printer to keep up with demand for Medical Marihuana Program patient ID cards. More than 40,000 Michigan patients are still waiting for their state-issued cards.

​Demand for medical marijuana ID cards is so high in Michigan, the state has had to order a new, six-figure printer that will allow it to produce 4,000 cannabis cards a day.

The state is far behind in printing cards for patients authorized to use cannabis under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. So far behind, in fact, that 40,000 patients still don’t have cards, and have instead been given tamper-proof letters to prove they’re qualified to use the herb for medical purposes, according to Rae Ramsdell, who oversees the program, reports the Associated Press.
More than 131,000 Michiganders have been approved for medical marijuana since state voters approved its legalization in 2008. Thousands more serve as caregivers, who are allowed to grow cannabis for up to five patients each.

NPRA

​Advocates have formed a new Michigan-based medical marijuana coalition, the National Patients Rights Association (NPRA). The group said it will encourage legislators, prosecutors, and local governments to fully honor the decision of citizens who voted to legalize medical marijuana in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

Michigan, whose Medical Marihuana Act was approved by nearly two-thirds of voters (63 percent) in 2008, will be among the first states targeted by the NPRA.
The new group said it is “backed by patients, caregivers, businesses, and a range of other supporters.” The coalition said it “will work to broaden awareness, reach legislators in a targeted manner, and help mobilize patients and caregivers who are affected by these laws.”

Photo: Michael P. McConnell/Oakland County Daily Tribune
Barbara Agro, office manager at the Clinical Relief medical marijuana dispensary in Ferndale, Michigan, talks on her cell phone outside the clinic on August 26, the day after police raided the facility and confiscated patient records, TVs, computers, a small amount of marijuana and even the business’s telephones.

​A judge has ordered Oakland County prosecutors to provide copies of seized patient files and ID cards, and to return computer hard drives and other items to two defendants charged in the county’s largest-ever raid on medical marijuana dispensaries.

Attorneys representing the owners of Ferndale medical marijuana dispensary Clinical Relief, Nicholas Agro, 38, of Lake Orion, Mich., and Ryan Richmond, 33, of Royal Oak, Mich., argued Thursday for the return of the items, which were taken by narcotics officers with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.
Officers raided the business, along with another dispensary in Waterford Township and multiple homes on August 25, reports Jennifer Chambers of The Detroit News.

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