Keweenaw Report Your Source for Local News and Sports
Local municipalities are in discussions this week as they decide how to address the legalization of marijuana in Michigan.
Voters passed Proposal 1 during the November 6th election, legalizing recreational marijuana use and as the state prepares its guidelines for regulation, the city of Hancock is taking its own measures to make sure that they are within compliance.
Newly appointed Hancock Mayor John Haeussler said, “There’s a lot of gray areas in the new proposal which has just passed and is soon going to be a law. It’s just not clear what municipalities’ rights are in this situation.”
At its city council meeting, the Hancock panel discussed the topic of regulation from a commercial standpoint and was met with several different perspectives.
Haeussler said, “It wasn’t about marijuana itself, it was about the regulation of businesses. It just happened to be marijuana businesses as opposed to peanut butter businesses, or something else.”
To prevent any confusion within the law, the city adopted an emergency 61 day order, that would prevent any marijuana business from opening within the city limits until the city has more data.
“‘We don’t want to put the city in a situation where we’re trying to rush ahead, a couple months ahead of someone else, and end up in court. You never want to be the first municipality that ends up in court. We really want to see what is happening with other municipalities and see what the legal boundaries are on here,” Haeussler said.
Another area of concern is the potential of lost funding for the city. Haeussler said, “We certainly would have to, if we move ahead of the state’s timetable, we’d have to create our own rules and regulations and forms and things like that. A lot of staffing time. And there’s some broader questions that people might not be thinking about such as: Are we taking ourselves out of certain funding opportunities that could be much bigger in scale than what we might be drawing in revenue from the new business licenses.”
Because marijuana is not recognized as legal by the federal government, certain rural development grants could be affected if the city does allow marijuana business to operate.
Haeussler said, “Particularly their water and environmental programs, we would be ineligible to get loans or grants throughout that program anymore as a municipality if we did allow the license of a marijuana business within the city.”
The ordinance expires in 61 days, but could be voted on again if more time is needed. “We anticipate that the state will not issue anything in the near future. We saw how the state dragged their heels with the medical marijuana facilities licensing act. Hopefully the state will act quicker. The people have spoken, the Proposal 1 has passed. So, I’m hopeful as a local governmental official that the state is going to act much quicker than they have in the past,” said Haeussler.
