ANN ARBOR, MI -- Marijuana activist and poet John Sinclair, although older now at 78, is no less the rebel he was in 1969.

“I knew they were going to be after me, but you can’t let them determine your life,” he said of his 1971 release from prison for possession of two joints.

About 9:49 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 1, at Arbors Wellness in Ann Arbor with a happy line of hundreds wrapped around the block, Sinclair made what was likely the first-ever licensed recreational retail marijuana sale in Michigan.

He paid $160.35 cash and grinned as he clutched a handful of pre-rolled joints with names like Gorilla Glue no. 9 and Forbidden Jelly.

John Sinclair makes the first re recreational marijuana purchase at Arbors Wellness in Ann Arbor on Dec. 1, 2019.

“Things have come full circle, haven’t they, John,” longtime marijuana activist Rick Thompson asked Sinclair, a Detroit resident who resembles a jazz musician with his iconic goatee beard and now uses a wheelchair.

“It would be more full if they came and gave me back the weed that they took,” Sinclair responded.

Sinclair said he’s smoked marijuana every day since 1962, not including the nearly two years he spent in prison between 1969 and 1971 serving a 10-year sentences that was later overturned by the Michigan Supreme Court.

Arbors Wellness is one of three dispensaries in Ann Arbor that received one of the state’s first recreational marijuana licenses and began selling marijuana to the general public Sunday, Dec. 1.

There’s a reason Sinclair was at the front of the line.

Nearly 15,000 people gathered at the University of Michigan’s Crisler Center in Ann Arbor to protest harsh marijuana laws in December 1971.

“They gave him ten for two, what else could Judge Colombo do?” sang John Lennon alongside Yoko Ono as a mass of people shouted, danced and openly smoked marijuana. They demanded the release of White Panther Party founder and activist John Sinclair.

Activist John Sinclair, a Flint native (1990 photo) (Date shot: 5/31/01) (THE FLINT JOURNAL)

Fifty years ago, Wayne County Judge Robert J. Colombo sentenced Sinclair, a then-27-year-old Flint native, to between 9 1/2 and 10 years in prison for possession of two marijuana joints he was accused of giving to an undercover Detroit cop.

"He isn’t a criminal, he isn’t a criminal at all,” Sinclair’s attorney Chuck Ravitz told Colombo at sentencing. "The criminals with respect to this law are the doctors, the legislatures, the attorneys who know, who know because they have the knowledge, that these laws are unconstitutional, that these laws defy all knowledge of science.”

A half century later, the same system that sentenced Sinclair to a decade behind bars is sanctioning commercial sale of the plant that put him there, thanks to a 2018 ballot initiative passed by 56% of Michigan voters. That vote has now come to its culmination. Marijuana prohibition, at least in Michigan and 10 other states, is over.

After 10 a.m. Sunday, anyone with a picture ID over the age of 21 became legally able to purchase marijuana from a growing number of licensed stores across the state. That includes four in Ann Arbor, mere miles from that historic 1971 concert that evolved into what’s now known as Hash Bash, an annual pro-marijuana rally on the University of Michigan campus.

Licensed recreational marijuana businesses as of Wednesday, Nov. 27:

A Map of qualified retail locations and those with applications pending:

Based on possession and transport limits set by the law, customers may purchase up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana, including a maximum of 15 grams of marijuana concentrates.

The law also allows residents to keep up to 10 ounces of marijuana and grow up to 12 plants in their residence.

Products sold at most retailers include: flower, vaping products, oil, concentrates, edibles and more.

The state began accepting applications for recreational marijuana businesses on Nov. 1 and had issued 18 licenses as of Nov. 27, including six to retail businesses, one for lab testing, six for growing 1,500 plants each, three for processing, one to a secure transportation company and to an event organizer.

Marijuana Regulatory Agency Director Andrew Brisbo projected a dozen of the 30-plus businesses seeking retail licenses would be able begin sales by the new year.

I am proud of the hard work our team put in to implement the will of the voters ahead of the deadline," Marijuana Regulatory Agency Director Andrew Brisbo said Sunday morning.

Except for small-scale growers, micro-businesses, defined as self-contained operations able to grow, process and sell up to 150 plants, and marijuana event organizers, all recreational businesses -- growers, testing labs, processors, transporters and retailers -- must first receive medical marijuana license before being granted a recreational license. That requirement expires on Dec. 6, 2021.

State budget officials expect the new recreational marijuana industry to begin generating nearly $1.5 billion in revenue annually by the second half of 2021.

Despite enticing tax revenue offered to communities that allow recreational marijuana businesses, nearly 80% of cities, townships and villages in Michigan, 1,411 of 1,733 as of the latest state count, have banned them.

Some, like Detroit, say their bans aren’t permanent, but are to allow officials time to structure the business rules.

“I’ve been somewhat surprised with municipal participation,” Brisbo said. “I think we always assumed there would be a lot of municipal opt-outs, based on the way the ballot initiative is written, but I think it’s been somewhat surprising that even municipalities that allow for medicinal use haven’t necessarily been allowing for the adult use side of things.”

“I think we’re starting to see municipalities get through those conversations and start to move ahead.”

Scott Greenlee, president of Healthy and Productive Michigan, spearheaded the losing battle against recreational marijuana legalization leading up to the 2018 election.

Greenlee remains a staunch opponent of legalization, calling it a “gateway drug” to worse vices, like heroin, opiates and cocaine. While he acknowledges some people use marijuana while contributing to society, he doesn’t believe it’s beneficial to their personal lives.

“People can be functional alcoholics,” he said last week before shops opened. “They can quote, unquote be visually be a productive member of society and have horrible issues going on inside the home, inside their body, etc.

" ... That’s one of the ways that alcohol and marijuana are actually somewhat comparable."

Greenlee said he and other members of Healthy and Productive Michigan continue to fight marijuana use by speaking at community meetings around the state “and providing the other side of the story.”

“Which is kind of tough to do in this day and age,” he said, “because there is so much acceptance and because people think, well, it’s not that big a deal.”

Sinclair, whose case galvanized the beginnings of a half-century push for marijuana legalization that slowly grew and overcame the will of prohibitionists like Greenlee, never served his full 10-year prison sentence.

Three days after that concert at Crisler Center, he was released.

The Michigan Supreme Court later deemed his sentence “cruel and unusual" punishment. The one-time manager of the Detroit Rock band MC5 went on to became a “jazz poet" and lifelong proponent of marijuana legalization.

Shortly after his release from Jackson State Prison, Sinclair went on a college campus speaking tour advocating for marijuana reform with Keith Stroup, who had just started the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and another released marijuana prisoner, Lee Otis Johnson.

“We went around trying to spread the gospel,” said Stroup, now 75. “ ... Marijuana smoking was considered a fringe activity and was too radical for most mainstream Americans to embrace.

“Americans at that point had been subject to 30, 40, 50 years of reefer madness propaganda ... and as a result it took us a long time to overcome that.”

Stroup continues to work with NORML as a legal adviser and still devotes much of his energy to marijuana legalization nationwide. He called the toppling of marijuana prohibition in Michigan “a major step forward for the legalization movement.”

“Here’s what I’ve always felt,”Stroup said last week. "The fight to legalize marijuana is only incidentally about marijuana. It’s really about personal freedom. Most Americans do not want the government coming into their homes to know what books they read, what music they listen to, how they conduct themselves in the privacy of the bedroom or whether they smoke marijuana or drink alcohol when they relax in the evening.

“It’s simply none of the government’s business.”

-- Gus Burns is the marijuana beat reporter for MLive. Contact him with questions, tips or comments at fburns@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, @GusBurns. Read more from MLive about medical and recreational marijuana.

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