MICHIGAN—Tax fights, black market politics, and free lock bags for stoners.
Michigan’s weed world brought a little bit of everything last week—including an Upper Peninsula dispensary that claims to have found a way to survive the state’s 24% wholesale tax and a group of marijuana prohibitionists who keep fumbling their own paperwork.
Here’s the rundown:
DEAD ON ARRIVAL: Michigan lawmakers have introduced two bills to repeal the state’s 24% wholesale tax, but they don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. One bill has sat in a committee without a hearing for nearly six months. The other doesn’t have a co-sponsor. State officials also say the plan would leave Michigan without a key revenue stream for road repairs.
SPLIT THE BILL: One Upper Peninsula dispensary says it’s been able to keep up with the burden of the state’s 24% wholesale tax by asking its suppliers to cover a portion of the bill, as well as “trying to be kind of picky” over what cannabis brands they’re allowing on the shelves.
SMELL TEST: Eli Savit, the Democratic nominee for attorney general in this year’s general election, is facing both criticism and praise—depending on who you ask—after his office declined to file criminal charges over a large black market cannabis cultivation operation.
BUCKEYE BLUES: Ohio weed is still significantly more expensive than the bud being sold at Michigan dispensaries, which is why so many Ohioans keep making the drive north. Lawmakers there have responded with a new law that makes it a crime to bring that weed back home.
BALLOT BUNGLE: A group in Benzonia Township is trying to ban marijuana businesses in town, but they keep fumbling the paperwork. Their latest petition was formally rejected by the township board, meaning there will be nothing on the ballot for voters to decide in November.
POWER PLANT: As plans for data centers pop up across Michigan and the fight over their energy use gets louder, some folks are starting to ask the same questions about weed—arguing that some cultivation operations burn more electricity per square foot than data centers.
CROWN JEWELS: A new brand of cannabis concentrates is landing on the shelves at Pure Options in Lansing, and one local columnist couldn’t be more stoked about it. It’s called Gold Crown, and everything it makes reportedly uses premium live resin rather than cheap distillate.
LOCK IT UP: The Kalamazoo County Health Department is giving away free cannabis lock bags while supplies last—namely to ensure your kid or dog doesn’t get into your stash.
ICYMI: If you missed last week’s newsletter, I wrote about the license plate cameras logging your trip to the dispensary—including the story of how the city of Madison Heights made a local dispensary install one of these cameras in its own parking lot as a condition of opening.
READ MORE: Favrd is quietly growing some of Michigan’s best weed
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