The medical marijuana laws in Michigan are about to get a lot less hazy. In June, a package of eight bills was introduced into the state House to address unclear issues within the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. The act, as written, is vague and confusing to law enforcement officials as well as medical marijuana patients, so state legislators have been looking at a way to clarify the act through further legislation.
The proposed legislation to clarify the act is necessary, but future legislation should be framed around the examples set by local communities. Although these bills will not be acted on until fall, their introduction is paving the way for a clearer statewide medical marijuana policy.
Medicinal marijuana has been around long enough in Michigan that some communities have learned what they want to do with it on a community-by-community basis, and that’s something the state government should use to its advantage when drawing up these new pieces of legislation.
Cities such as Lansing have been extremely receptive to medical marijuana and have attempted to integrate it into their communities through both educating their patients and police. Utilizing individual community models offers the best of both worlds: a framework to work inside, but the freedom within that framework to be equitable across the state.
Statewide guidelines on medical marijuana would remove some grey areas that currently exist in the act. Adding guidelines can only clarify and demystify some of the issues that arise with medical marijuana. Guiding legislation, such as the proposal from state Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw Township, in which a physician prescribing medical marijuana to a patient has to have treated that patient previously and continue to follow up on his or her condition, ensures that medical marijuana only gets to the people who truly need it.
There’s concern, however, that the proposed legislation is only an effort to make medical marijuana more difficult to procure for individuals. That concern should take a backseat to the necessity of clearing up the act, to preventing mischaracterization of medical marijuana patients and avoid confusion with law enforcement.
But that’s not to say that those concerns are invalid. But the bill package will be taken up in the fall, so all parties invested in the future of medical marijuana in Michigan can make their voice heard before then, to ensure the end result of this proposed legislation is something beneficial to medical marijuana patients and understandable to law enforcement. Legislators are not trying to take away medical marijuana from patients who need it, they are trying to establish legislation to end the confusion that occasionally surrounds the practice of medical marijuana.
Medical marijuana is here to stay in Michigan. With that understanding, trying to clarify the law is advisable, so patients and police know what their abilities are concerning medical marijuana. It’s clarification, not dissolution, that is propelling this legislation.
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