KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — Michigan’s Marijuana licensing agency turned the lobby of the Annex at the Wings Event Center into a lecture hall for about 200 would-be entrepreneurs who want to get into the Medical Marijuana business, and possibly even bigger businesses down the road.
Municipal officials have criticized the State’s regulatory efforts to date as chaotic but Spokesman David Harns says the emergency rules will be out in a few weeks and they will be ready to start issuing licenses on December 15th.
He says they have had to start from scratch to create regulations for what essentially is a whole new industry.
In the beginning, they will be depending on market forces to sort out which businesses flourish and which fold will fold.
He says they will be tracking each plant from seed to sale, and a good portion of the sessions they have been holding around the state focused on how that will work.
He says they had 12-hundred people appear at the session near Detroit.
Yesterday the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol announced they had collected over 385,000 petition signatures. That’s more than enough to put the question to voters, should marijuana be legalized for recreational use. They are expected to submit their petitions in a few days. If voters approve it, the same framework that is being established for medical marijuana now, will be used to regulate recreational pot later.
