LANSING — Licensed medical marijuana dispensaries got a break Wednesday, ending a mini-panic over a shortage of marijuana from licensed growers.

A new resolution that will be considered by the Medical Marijuana Licensing Board next week will allow licensed dispensaries to continue to purchase, test and sell marijuana from registered caregivers, who have been supplying dispensaries while state-licensed growers get up and running to produce usable marijuana.

Prior to the announcement, the licensed dispensaries had 30 days to sell all their marijuana products from caregivers and then transition to getting product from licensed growers. The dispensary owners were supposed to destroy whatever was left over from caregivers.

A problem developed, however, when the 12 licensed marijuana growers in the state didn’t have enough mature product to supply dispensaries. It takes up to six months for a marijuana plant to grow, mature and produce the flower sold in dispensaries.

That left dispensary owners in the position of having spent $66,000 in regulatory assessments, on top of $10,000 in other local and state costs, and being unable to stay open because they had no product.

The resolution will give owners some welcome breathing room, said Stuart Carter, owner of Utopia Gardens dispensary in Detroit.

"There's just such uncertainty in this business," he said. "Hopefully this will all sort itself out."

At the same time, there are about 98 dispensaries around the state that continue to operate under emergency rules until they can get a license. Those pot shops are able to get their marijuana from the caregiver market, set up after voters legalized medical marijuana in 2008.

Each of the 43,056 registered caregivers in the state are allowed to grow up to 72 plants — 12 plants for each of five medical marijuana cardholders and themselves. There are 297,515 registered patients in Michigan.

If the caregivers have excess marijuana, much of it has gone to temporary dispensaries that have been operating with the approval of the communities where they’re located, as well as the blessing of the state under the emergency rules.

The state Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Department said Tuesday that they won’t shut down any of those temporarily operating dispensaries before Dec. 31 while they try to negotiate a settlement of a lawsuit regarding the ability of the state to shut down unlicensed dispensaries.

More:New medical marijuana rules in Michigan allow home delivery

More:Marijuana will be legal in Michigan on Dec. 6: What to know

Kathleen Gray covers the marijuana industry for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.