Christopher Haxel

Lansing State Journal

LANSING - While most of what's sold in Lansing marijuana dispensaries remains illegal under federal statute, few items represent the industry's hazy legality as well as the grape-flavored "Medicated Cool-Aide."

Filled with about 20 ounces of purple liquid, each bottle sports a cartoon cluster of grapes decorated with big red sunglasses and a lit doobie.

The sugary concoction also contains 250 milligrams of THC, the major psychoactive compound in cannabis, also known as weed, grass, pot, ganja, chronic, marijuana or, in Michigan's laws, marihuana.

The THC is a problem because the Drug Enforcement Agency lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with no medical benefit, which means the purple drink has no nutrition label and has not been inspected by the Food and Drug Administration or any local health agency.

Voters disagreed with the federal stance when they passed the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA) in 2008, and 23 other states allow some form of medical marijuana to treat ailments such as chronic pain, glaucoma or epilepsy.

Unlike some of those other states, however, Michigan has not implemented clear laws to regulate the medical marijuana industry and its products, such as Medicated Cool-Aide. The resulting statewide patchwork of municipal regulations forces patients and their caregivers into a legal gray area that can shift based on local elections or a new court ruling.

In Grand Rapids, home to some 195,000 people, local regulations have left only a handful of dispensaries.

In Lansing, population 115,000, officials have taken a hands-off approach to medical marijuana enforcement. The Lansing State Journal found 55 dispensaries operating in late July; the city currently does not track them.

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Adding to Lansing's appeal is that large townships abutting the city — Meridian, Delta, Delhi and DeWitt — don't allow dispensaries and East Lansing, which allows them with a special use permit, currently has none operating there.

On one hand, dozens of storefronts are filled and hundreds of people are employed in this budding industry. Dispensary owners say low prices and product availability draw patients from across the state — visitors who spend money at other local businesses not associated with the cannabis industry.

On the other hand, some of the capital city’s dispensaries have taken the lack of regulation or enforcement as carte blanche to skirt the laws. And the sheer number of dispensaries visible across town has prompted concern in neighborhoods and the business community.

As the Lansing City Council wades through a proposed ordinance that would regulate its dispensaries, many cannabis workers express concern that patients’ access to medical marijuana could suffer.

Alternative medicine

Like many dispensary workers, Joshua McGuire, who manages CapCity Med Station, said he got his start as a patient.

After a serious motorcycle crash, McGuire was for years prescribed 14 pills daily, nine of them narcotic painkillers.

“That’s what the world told me I needed to be successful,” he said.

While the pills eased his pain, McGuire said they made him lethargic and trance-like.

So in 2014, he cashed out part of his retirement savings to fund a two-week trip to Denver, where he hoped to wean himself off prescription medication and find an alternative through cannabis.

“I ended up dropping all 14 pills … using nothing but medical marijuana,” he said. “It changed my whole life.”

Research on the medical benefits of marijuana remains somewhat scarce, partially because of the federal government’s position that the drug has no medical value.

But according to The Washington Post, a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia indicates a sharp drop in painkiller prescriptions for patients in states with medical marijuana.

The study, which analyzed a database of prescription drugs paid for under Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013, found that doctors in medical marijuana states prescribed an average of about 1,800 fewer doses of painkillers per year.

Prescriptions for anxiety, nausea, psychosis, sleep disorders, depression and seizures also dropped.

"The results suggest people are really using marijuana as medicine and not just using it for recreational purposes,” said the study’s co-author in a release announcing the findings.

In Lansing, some dispensaries seem to take the patient-caregiver relationship seriously.

Many establishments maintain the aura of a doctor’s office, with waiting rooms, employees who wear name tags and scrubs, and private rooms where patients can speak freely about their medical conditions and seek advice about which products to purchase.

Other dispensaries foster the feeling of a hipster coffee shop or liquor store, with “budtenders” standing behind sleek display cases or iMac computers.

A couple even call themselves lounges, where people plop on leather couches as they smoke pot and watch ESPN.

While some dispensaries maintain a low profile — Best Buds, on East Michigan Avenue, removed its signage altogether — others flaunt a stoner image or struggle with professionalism in an industry that has roots in subversive culture.

While prescription medicine is often branded with names that sound scientific, patients who visit Lansing dispensaries can purchase strains of marijuana such as Girl Scout Cookie, Green Crack, Jack Kevorkian or Double Tangie Banana, which sports banana, sherbet and tangerine flavors.

Edible products such as the medicated “Cool-Aide,” which flouts the Kool-Aid trademark, or Bong Island High Tea, do little to convince naysayers that the industry wants to be treated seriously.

That image, combined with the high number of dispensaries, led city officials to propose a new ordinance to license and regulate the facilities.

The proposal would enact zoning restrictions and require a $5,000 license application fee, with another $10,000 due annually.

If enacted, such an ordinance would make it difficult for dispensaries to stay open, says James McGillie, a lawyer who represents patients, caregivers and dispensaries in Lansing.

Impossible math

McGillie said it’s not clear if dispensaries are legal, because current state law neither explicitly allows nor prohibits them.

If they are legal, he said, the statutory limit of five patients per caregiver doesn't allow dispensaries to operate in a way that’s economically viable.

Patients can choose to grow their own plants, or designate a caregiver who supplies them. Dispensaries ostensibly operate as a collection of caregivers, theoretically only selling marijuana to a patient who has designated one of its employees as a caregiver.

McGillie likens the system to one in which an oil change shop can only change the oil of five customers per technician.

“Would you blame the operation for considering servicing the oil of unauthorized clients?” he asked.

Statewide, officials say about 38% of the state's 205,000 registered patients have designated a caregiver, although many caregivers do not operate public as dispensaries.

“In terms of enforcement, the city seems to be pretty even-handed in terms of kind of leaving (dispensaries) to it,” McGillie said. “Which is astonishing to me, because leaving them to it presupposes that everything that goes on within the store is in compliance with the (MMMA), and I don’t know if that’s true.”

Steve Green, who is active in the local cannabis community and currently works as a consultant for The Green Room, said every dispensary deals with the murky legality differently.

“I’ll just say there are ways around it," he said. “Whether it’s a (caregiver) change form, whether it’s an emergency change form, whether you have your caregiver (present at the dispensary).”

He said some dispensaries use a double-door delivery system similar to a post office box. Patients select their product, then an employee on the other side of the wall places it inside a box and closes the door. Patients open the door on their side of the wall and collect the marijuana.

“That way you can never say who transferred it to you,” Green said. “There’s different ways around it. Some are ridiculous, some are not. I think the people who are doing it the most transparently are showing that they don’t feel that they’re breaking the (MMMA).”

Green and others claim Section 8 of the act grants them the leeway to ignore many of the rules established in other parts of the statute.

It offers anyone facing criminal charges an “affirmative defense” to request the charges be dismissed, so long as a patient’s doctor agrees marijuana is likely to provide medical benefit and the amount of marijuana involved is “not more than was reasonably necessary” for the patient.

“That part (of the law) doesn’t say you have to have a caregiver at all, and that part takes away all limits whatsoever,” Green said.

Given the state of the cannabis industry in Lansing, it’s clear many of Green’s peers agree. As dispensaries continue to push the boundary, the marijuana act’s vague language makes it sometimes difficult to even know where that boundary is.

For example, McGillie said, there’s no explicit legal framework for patients or caregivers to acquire plants or seeds to begin growing them.

Once a seed is planted, it can be months before it’s ready for harvest, which would leave a patient with an established medical need little option besides sitting and watching plants grow.

Cool-Aide confusion

There’s also uncertainty about the legality of edibles, which are generally infused with oils derived from marijuana plants, and are freely available in many of Lansing’s dispensaries.

The aforementioned Cool-Aide, which sells for about $10 per bottle, is probably illegal in Michigan because the state's Court of Appeals ruled such a concoction doesn’t meet the definition of “usable marijuana” under state law, which only permits dried flowers and leaves of the cannabis plant.

Detroit officials took that ruling into account earlier this year when they banned such edibles — some call them medibles — as part of new regulations governing dispensaries in that city.

“So now those same people drive two hours to Lansing to buy the edibles that they could have bought two miles away,” Green said.

And while that may provide a boon to the local economy, dispensary workers say it hinders the ability of some patients to get the cannabis products they need.

“It affected the patients,” McGuire said. “I don’t know what they were shooting for with that, but it affected the patients.”

McGuire said patients with some ailments such as lung cancer can’t smoke marijuana at all, and others prefer to treat themselves with other cannabis products.

“If they take these (edibles) away I can no longer use my medicine because I won’t smoke in front of my child,” he said. “It should be the same as a pharmacy where the doctor will give you a choice (of medications).”

Legislative malaise

If there’s one thing caregivers, patients and the officials charged with regulating dispensaries in Lansing can agree on, it’s that the state has failed to make a clear set of laws that govern medical marijuana.

“Ideally we would operate with one set of rules and standards that should govern across the state of Michigan,” said Interim Ingham County Prosecutor Gretchen Whitmer at a recent meeting, where officials discussed Lansing’s proposed dispensary regulations. “However we have yet to see that and that’s one issue that vexes communities like ours.”

Patients and caregivers have wildly different experiences across the state, depending on where they live, and how aggressively local officials pursue medical marijuana cases.

Lisa McCormick, Ingham County's chief assistant prosecutor, said last month that she is unaware of any medical marijuana dispensary cases from the Lansing Police Department that have been sent to the Prosecutor's Office since 2011.

While Lansing mayor Virg Bernero implemented in May a moratorium on new Lansing dispensaries that was backed by the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, he has said he supports not only medical use but also marijuana legalization.

Colorado dreaming

In many ways, the prospect of legalization remains the green elephant in the room.

Pro-marijuana activists gathered about 354,000 signatures to put a proposal to legalize marijuana on the November ballot, but the matter is currently embroiled in a legal battle because state officials say 137,000 of those signatures were collected more than 180 days before they were submitted. About 253,000 signatures would be needed to secure a ballot spot.

While the prospect of a ballot initiative this year seems low, there’s a sense of inevitability among many in the local cannabis community.

“Imagine if it hit recreational (legality) as it did in Colorado,” McGuire said. “The state would have more money — I mean our roads are horrible in the city, horrible. They’re the worst roads I’ve ever driven on.”

One study released in February by a Hillsdale College economics professor analyzed several marijuana-related bills currently stuck in the state legislature and estimated that between $44 million and $63 million in revenue could be generated if the state implements a better framework to govern medical marijuana.

The study didn’t explore how much revenue could be generated if the state implements full legalization.

Colorado, which has about 55% the population of Michigan, estimates it collected $135 million in revenue from recreational and medical marijuana sales in 2015, with $35 million of that earmarked for schools.

Dispensary owners who spoke with the Lansing State Journal were nearly unanimous in their willingness to abide by some degree of increased oversight and regulation, largely because the move could raise money through excise taxes and represent another step toward their legitimacy as businesses.

From the city’s corridors, where landlords gladly rent storefronts that were previously unoccupied, to the aisles of Home Depot, where Scotts Miracle-Gro sells hydroponics products explicitly marketed to marijuana growers, it’s evident that some business owners in Lansing are embracing the cannabis industry.

Although opposition clearly remains both among voters and within the Republican-controlled statehouse, it’s tough to ignore the creeping acceptance of marijuana as something that’s both medically and economically beneficial.

In the meantime, as Lansing inches toward implementation of new regulations that are expected to take effect in November at the earliest, McGillie said he hopes officials can devise a system that doesn't ultimately hurt medical marijuana patients.

"If you want to have safe access to cannabis in Michigan because you are a patient under the (MMMA), then that’s something that should also be available to you without having to feel like you’re going to some back alley or speakeasy," he said. "My hope is that the system finds a framework where people know if they’re doing something right and they’re doing something wrong."

Contact Christopher Haxel at 517-377-1261 or chaxel@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisHaxel.