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Proposed Changes To Michigan's Marijuana Law Hang On Lame-Duck Session's Final Hours


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The state Senate may vote in the next day or so on major changes to Michigan’s medical marijuana law.

The bills would create a framework for licensing dispensaries and regulating edible forms of marijuana. 

Critics say the legislation is too vague.  

MEDICALmarijuanaprotestjackson030813_010
Medical marijuana supporters have been calling for changes to the state medical marijuana law for years.
CREDIT STEVE CARMODY / MICHIGAN RADIO

“I think it’s the equivalent of Obamacare in terms of not being vetted properly,” says Terrence Jungel, with the Michigan Sheriff’s' Association. 

But supporters say the legislation has been under development for years and is not being rushed through in the final days of the Legislature’s lame-duck session.

Opponents also say they don’t like that people legally allowed to grow marijuana in Michigan could sell small amounts to dispensaries under the legislation. 

“Nowhere was the original medical marijuana act ever supposed to be a for-profit business,” says Robert Stevenson, with the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police.     

Robin Schneider is with the National Patients Rights Association. She says it’s not fair to prevent caregivers from making some money on surplus medical marijuana. Besides, she says, patients need it. 

“There’s not a marijuana fairy going to fly around and gift the patients with medical marijuana,” says Schneider. 

Schneider says patients are "literally dying" waiting for state lawmakers to make safe medical marijuana more accessible.

If the state Senate doesn’t act on the legislation this week, it dies. 

If the bills are approved, they will head to the governor’s desk.

A spokesman for Gov. Rick Snyder declined to comment on the medical marijuana bills, except to say “The governor’s practice is to thoroughly review bills once they’ve been presented to him before determining whether the bills should be signed into law.” 

 

http://michiganradio.org/post/proposed-changes-michigans-marijuana-law-hang-lame-duck-sessions-final-hours

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LANSING-  A last-minute push by Michigan law enforcers derailed a pair of pro-marijuana bills being considered by lawmakers on the legislature’s last day of session for the 2013-2014 legislative cycle.

 
The bills would have created a state-regulated system of medical marijuana dispensaries, called Provisioning Centers, and re-legalized the use, manufacture and possession of concentrated and edible forms of marijuana.
 
Several weeks of feverish negotiations between the office of Governor Rick Snyder, top senate leaders, representatives of governmental agencies and organizations from the cannabis community had led to a version of the bill all stakeholders were in agreement with.
 
Three days before the session’s final voting day, officials from the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) dropped a long list of demands on the Governor’s desk. Although they had been intimately involved in the negotiations that led to the commonly-accepted version, LARA used the surprise tactic in an obvious effort to halt the Governor’s approval of the pending legislation.
 
Other voices raised 11th-hour issues. Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw, himself a medical doctor, challenged the efficacy of marijuana- an issue resolved in 2008 with the Medical Marihuana Act (MMA). Rumors began to swirl that the agencies and individuals who had agreed to support the bills were having second thoughts.
 
The medical marijuana community responded with a telephone blitz of the Governor’s office and key Senate players. Industry reports indicate hundreds of phone calls were directed at the governor on a single day, all bearing the same message: force the Senate to pass the bills.
 
The other side responded with a telephone campaign of their own. Advocates arriving at the state capitol building on Thursday were told that county Sheriffs from across the state had called the Senators and House Representatives from their districts just that morning.
 
Additionally, a letter outlining more than ten reasons why police felt a dispensary bill was bad for the state had been authored and mailed to state legislators. That letter carried signatures from the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan, the state Sheriffs Association and other law enforcement organizations.
 
Leading the charge against the bill: Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard. Bouchard had been one of the prominent leaders of the unsuccessful campaign to halt the MMA in 2008, and several legislators mentioned him in connection with the phone blitz. The other very prominent opponent of that voter-directed initiative was the state’s current Attorney General, Bill Schuette.
 
Bouchard’s insistence that the bills be halted was effective against one of the bill’s sponsors: Rep. Eileen Kowall, R- White Lake. The dispensary bill, HB 4271, and her patient-initiated medibles bill, HB 5104, had been run as a pair during negotiation in the House and Senate and had been approved together in three prior legislative votes.
 
On Thursday, as a result of the Bouchard intimidation call, Rep. Kowall dropped her support for HB 4271. Other legislators followed suit and suddenly, the bill with a clean substitute and legislative support was in dire straits.
 
HB 4271’s sponsor, Rep. Michael Callton, R-Nashville, spent time in the Senate talking up the benefits of the bill, but the fix was in. Legislators slowly abandoned their support during the long day’s run until it was clear there were not enough votes to pass the legislation.
 
An unintended casualty of the Bouchard blitz: the patient-friendly and much-needed HB 5104, the Kowall bill. As legislators peeled back their support for the dispensary bill many dropped support for both bills, despite assurances that they were separate issues. As midnight approached it became evident the Senate did not have enough support for the concentrates and medibles bill, which required a 3/4 supermajority vote, either.
 
Neither of the bills were called up by Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, for a vote during the legislature’s last day on the job.
 
Jim Powers, the father of a pediatric cannabis patient in Michigan and a frequently-seen face at legislative hearings, had this to say about yesterday’s action in Lansing:
 
“The lack of a vote in the Senate on House Bills 5104 and 4271 was a slap in the face to the pediatric cannabis community of Michigan. We pleaded with our lawmakers during the last 18 months for the restoration of our section 4 protections and safe access. We were promised by the vast majority of them that they would support these bills until they became law. It is devastating to know that our 6 year old son’s health and wellbeing is not a priority to our state or our law enforcement community.”

 
The governor’s office claims they want to continue the negotiations over the nature of the dispensary legislation after the new year. Although all bills not approved on that last day of the legislature’s obligation for 2014 must be re-introduced, essentially starting over, this bill carries detail and effort that will not have to be duplicated.
 
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does anyone have the list of changes from LARA/gov on 4271 ? i want to read them.

 

even i thought 4271 was a half-bill. why were medibles made by dispensaries not covered under the food regulations again? didnt want to have proper drains and restrooms and all that?

 

or was it because they were using non-food safe clothes washers to extract cannabis oil ?

 

i'm not being anti-dispensary here, i just dont understand. it seemed like a not big deal to have prepared foods be covered by the existing food regulations.

Edited by t-pain
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Because it was marijuana t-pain.

 

They have to create it's own state guidelines. There were like 3 pages of the law that dealt with regulations on medible making as well; including health department inspections.  Also they would be required to be laboratory tested which is waaay beyond any other food business.

 

 Am I missing something there?

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 LANSING — The last day of the lame duck session was expected to bleed into the wee hours of Friday morning as legislators finished up work for the year.

A pair of bills expanding access to medical marijuana gained a great deal of attention throughout the year and passed the House with bi-partisan support, but couldn't get enough support to get a vote in the Senate on the last day of session.

The bills would have made it easier for medical marijuana users to purchase the pot and use different forms of marijuana. One bill would have allowed communities to decide if they would let medical marijuana dispensaries in their towns and regulate those facilities. Another would have legalized marijuana-infused products, such as brownies and oils, for use by people who have a hard time smoking the product.

The dispensaries were a key for medical marijuana supporters and caregivers, who after a state Supreme Court ruling last year, are left with one option: growing their own marijuana or buying the weed from a licensed caregiver, who is limited in the amount they can grow.

Hearings on the bills this year attracted standing room only crowds of people, mostly supporting the legislation. But law enforcement and some health care professionals put on a full-court press against the legislation this week and the Senate decided not to take up the bills.

They could be re-introduced next year.

Dozens of bills received final passage on the last day of the 2014 legislative year.

■ Easing the process of getting a non-violent criminal record expunged passed the Senate on a 38-0 vote and is on its way to the governor. Under the bill, people with one felony and two misdemeanor convictions can apply to get either the felony or the misdemeanors expunged from their record. The final decision on whether to clear the record will be made by a judge.

■ A bill makes it more expensive to get a recount of election results. Currently, a candidate requesting a recount must pay $10 per precinct to get a recount underway. Under the bill that received final passage in the Senate on a 28-10 vote, that amount would increase to $25 per precinct. And for candidates who lost by more than 50 votes, it would cost them $125 per precinct if they asked for a recount.

■ A bill finalized the transfer of 126 acres and 15 buildings that used to be the Detroit House of Corrections and the Western Wayne County Correctional Facility in Plymouth to the Land Bank Fast Track Authority, which hopes to sell the land quickly. The property has been vacant since 2005 and may be a tough sell for the land bank. It also used to be an open dump for the city of Detroit for 30 years from the 1920s to 1950s. Clean-up costs have been estimated between $4 million to $20 million.

■ Three bills make it easier for homeowners to restructure their property tax debt to avoid foreclosure. One bill would reduce interest rates from 18% to 6%, allow homeowners to enter into a payment plan for up to five years, and a debt forgiveness component to make sure any homeowner's tax bill is no more than 25 percent of the home's market value. Officials in the city of Detroit, which has embarked on an aggressive campaign to keep people in their homes and sell abandoned properties to buyers willing to rehab the homes, praised the bills' passage as another sign of the city's resurgence.

"State lawmakers today passed three important pieces of legislation that will significantly improve the quality of life for the residents of our city," said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan in a statement. "Individually, these bills help Detroiters avoid tax foreclosure, allow the city to more quickly remove blight and help attract thousands of new jobs to Detroit."

■ A bill creates protocols for law enforcement to carry Narcan, a drug that can successfully reverse the deadly effects of a heroin overdose, when answering overdose calls. The bill also provides for training for law enforcement and other first responders. More than two dozen states have passed laws expanding access to Narcan.

■ People who circulate petitions for candidates or ballot issues would not have to be registered voters or residents of the district where a candidate is running under a bill that received final passage in the House Thursday night. The bill was brought up to address a federal court ruling earlier this year in a case dealing with petitions submitted by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit. He was initially kicked off the ballot, not because he lacked sufficient valid signatures, but because the circulators weren't properly registered to vote. A federal judge said the requirement was unconstitutional and put Conyers back on the ballot.

■ A package of bills to set up a commission to review the state's sentencing guidelines and tweak the state's Community Corrections Act passed unanimously in the Senate. But separate bills that would have reformed parole and probation policies in the state faced fierce resistance from law enforcement and Attorney General Bill Schuette. Those two bills failed on mostly party-line votes.

The bills are headed to Gov. Rick Snyder to review and possibly sign into law.

 

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/12/18/lawmakers-wrap-lame-duck-session/20615843/

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