While Michigan voters approved the legalization of medical marijuana in 2008, California voters will decide in November

and tax the drug.

Mark Binelli reported on the movement for Rolling Stone's April issue, using Detroit as an example of marijuana's potential economic impact.

"From California to downtown Detroit, there's a green revolution sweeping across the nation -- and it's changing the weed business forever," Binelli wrote.

Medical pot has kick started a supply and service industry in Metro Detroit. While the law is designed to keep selling operations small, doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs are

without moving the actual product.

Like several reporters before him, Binelli dropped in on

, the state's first medical-marijuana trade school located in Southfield, and spoke with founder Nick Tennant and a couple of class members hoping to cash in on the growing industry.

But he also paid a visit to John Sinclair, poet, pot activist and former manager of the MC5. In typically colorful fashion, Sinclair and co-manager Holice P. Wood said they're planning on opening a pot collective in Detroit, Wood humorously suggested he smoked weed with several former City Council members and argued that legalizing marijuana could turn around the struggling city.

According to the magazine, marijuana is the top cash crop in 12 states, growers and farmers produced more than 22 million pounds of the plant in 2006 and prohibition costs taxpayers an estimated $42 billion annually.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but President Barack Obama last year indicated his administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers who follow state laws.

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