HOUGHTON — If you’re looking to become an expert in cannabis — both the chemistry and business sides of the business — the Upper Peninsula is the place to be.

Northern Michigan University in Marquette and Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie are among the few colleges in the nation to offer degree programs for students looking to break into the budding industry.

But if those graduates want to stay in the U.P. for a job in the industry or find a place to score some legal weed north of the Mackinac Bridge, good luck.

Only one medical marijuana dispensary in the U.P. has been licensed by the state. And it’s in Houghton, a five-hour drive from Sault Ste. Marie or St. Ignace in good weather and nearly 10 hours from metro Detroit.

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“It’s kind of surreal being the only one up here,” said Penny Milkey, who, along with her husband, Ryan, owns the Northern Specialty Health dispensary in Houghton. “We get people from as far away as the Sault, Marquette and Ironwood.”

On a sunny Friday afternoon in late May, the dispensary was abuzz with business as roughly a dozen medical marijuana cardholders checked in over the course of an hour, looking to buy a gram or two of cannabis flower with names like Stuffed French Toast, Alien BooBerries or Tangerine Power.

“This is legit,” said Willie Bolo, an Escanaba resident who bought some pot at the Houghton shop, where he has been a medical marijuana patient for two years.. “It really helps with my anxiety and stress level."

For the 7,081 medical marijuana cardholders in the Upper Peninsula, which has a total population of 311,361, Northern Specialty Health is the only legal option.

And it’s not a given, though, that the dispensary will be able to transition to the adult recreational market when legal weed becomes commercially available later this year.

Many communities Up North banning pot shops for now

Most of the bigger cities in the Upper Peninsula — Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie, Escanaba, Ironwood and Houghton — have decided to at least temporarily prohibit marijuana businesses in their towns once it becomes commercially available for adult recreational use later this year.

That leaves the 230 or so students currently enrolled in Northern Michigan University’s cannabis plant chemistry and business programs without a job if they want to stay in the Upper Peninsula.

“It’s an emerging industry and an area of passionate interest for a lot of students,” said Mark Paulsen, a professor and head of the Chemistry Department at NMU. “But, as always, in any community, there are a variety of opinions on the adult recreational use market. Not everyone thinks it’s a great idea.”

About 15 students will be in the first class to graduate with a cannabis plant degree next spring at NMU and Paulsen said he expects the enrollment to grow north of 300 by the fall.

“The students I’ve dealt with the most are very enthusiastic and very excited,” he said. “They want to be part of something bigger.”

Likewise, at Lake Superior State University, which will begin offering cannabis chemistry classes in the fall, about 50 students have already signed up for the chemistry and business degree programs and more are expected to enroll in the fall, LSSU President Rodney Hanley said.

“I wanted to challenge the faculty to come up with new academic program ideas that would attract students and one of the ideas that came back was the cannabis chemistry. That took off and soon thereafter, business faculty got engaged to put together a program for cannabis business,” he said. “What was happening in Michigan when voters legalized marijuana was very advantageous and Canada legalized it, too, so it seemed a perfect fit.”

“We’ve seen a fair amount of interest across the country and from Canada,” which is just a short ride across the International Bridge from Sault Ste. Marie, Hanley said, noting that it was incumbent upon the university to look into training students for what is predicted to be a multi-billion dollar industry.

"These programs are not about your father's cannabis," he added. "This is about serious intellectual inquiry. Some kids reach out to us and think that this is all about smoking dope and that is not the case. These are not easy programs to get through."

And while the Sault Ste. Marie City Council has voted to at least temporarily prohibit marijuana businesses from the city, “that’s disconnected from what we do from an academic perspective,” Hanley said. “And this is a very fluid and fast-moving environment. What a city council may ban today, tomorrow they may change their mind.”

City councils in both Sault Ste. Marie and Marquette voted to ban legal weed businesses shortly after Michigan residents voted to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use in November. Voters in both cities overwhelmingly supported the legalization by double-digit margins.

But in the Upper Peninsula overall, the results were much closer, with the anti-legalization forces rejecting the proposal by a mere 821 votes out of 128,129 ballots cast.

And that is reason enough for cities to want to eschew marijuana in U.P. towns, said state Rep. Beau LaFave, R-Iron Mountain.

“You’ve got a lot of community leaders who don’t like marijuana and you’ve got a bunch of liberal college professors who love the stuff and want to see it on every corner,” he said. “The disconnect is that the universities don’t represent the values of U.P. residents at large.”

But Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, who didn’t support the legalization ballot proposal, said he’s glad the universities are offering programs and classes.

“I’ve become a believer that there are benefits medicinally and in order to understand that, we need aggressive research,” he said. “But the law is still such a big mess that if I was a member of a local unit of government, I would vote to not have it, too.”

Once the state Marijuana Regulatory Agency finishes developing the rules and regulations that will govern the adult recreational market later this summer, some of the cities say they will reevaluate their initial decisions.

“Marquette opted out, but we did that with a very clear understanding that we would, in all likelihood, be opting in once we had the rules and regulations from the state of Michigan,” Marquette Mayor Fred Stonehouse said. “From a leadership perspective, we tend to be conservative. But that doesn't mean we're against it. We’re just trying to be very careful.”

Eric Waara, city manager of Houghton, said the city, which is home to Michigan Technological University, is a smaller community and has a difficult time drafting complex ordinances without state guidelines in hand.

“It took the state years to come up with licensing and rules for medical marijuana, so we decided to opt out of recreational simply because we didn’t want to go first until the state had their rules in place,” he said. “It comes down to what does the community want and who do we want to be. This is something that has far-reaching effects. It’s going to take a lot of thought for our council.”

It's a lonely business in the U.P.

For Northern Specialty Health, the sooner a decision on recreational marijuana businesses is made, the better. Milkey said she’d love to make the transition and begin serving more customers as soon as possible.

Staying in business in the Upper Peninsula is a challenge. One medical marijuana grower in Germfask has also gotten a license to grow up to 1,500 plants, but that license was awarded in May and plants won’t be ready to harvest and sell for several months. One other grower and an additional dispensary have been pre-qualified to get a license, but now those applicants have to get approval from local communities and secure facilities for their businesses before they can get a license from the state.

As a result, Milkey, who was a teacher before switching to the cannabis business full-time, has been buying her marijuana and processed products, such as edibles and concentrates, from growers in the Lower Peninsula.

“And that adds to my transportation costs,” she said, noting $4,000 in bills at least once a month to move product across the bridge and up to one of the most remote places in Michigan.

There were unlicensed dispensaries operating for several years in the Upper Peninsula, but all of those have closed as the state has tried to get the regulated and licensed market off the ground.

Milkey now has a captive audience, at least for a while, competing only with a still-thriving black market, fueled by marijuana growers operating outside of the regulated and licensed system, as well as the people over the age of 21 who can now grow up to 12 plants in their homes for personal use as a part of the legalization vote.

While acknowledging the difficulties of competing with unlicensed dealers who don’t have the same regulatory, testing and transportation costs, as well as the overhead of running a storefront with about 10 employees, Milkey said her customers know they’re buying from a legal, legitimate business and getting a quality, tested product.

“I’m in this for the long haul,” she said.

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