On February 3rd, Court of Claims Judge Thomas Cameron formalized a temporary injunction issued by Judge Christopher Murray in December, which stopped the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency (CRA) from recalling cannabis products tested by Viridis Laboratories Bay City facility. The CRA’s decision to recall products tested at the corporation’s Lansing operation remained intact. The reason for the recall was public safety.
In the late summer of last year, an aggressive move was made by the Michigan Cannabis Manufacturers Association (MCMA) to destroy the Michigan medical marijuana caregiver system, established by Michigan voters in 2008. The major premise for the caregiver crackdown, is the allegation that caregiver marijuna is “untested” and hence dangerous to the health of the cannabis consuming public.
In the Spring of 2021, the MCMA and the CRA successfully orchestrated the regulation of Delta 8 THC by the Michigan Legislature. Delta 8 is legal and unregulated under federal law. It is derived from THC and chemically processed from hemp. It has been described as “marijuana lite” because the “high” is relatively mild. Although there was no evidence of anyone in Michigan or elsewhere being harmed by Delta 8, the purported reason for Delta 8 regulation was public safety.
Is there a pattern to all this?
Sheriff Mike Bouchard
To answer this question, we must go back in time to circa 2016, when the Michigan Legislature formally legalized medical marijuana dispensaries in Michigan. This was seven years after medical marijuana was approved by the voters. In 2014, an attempt to set up a simplified dispensary system, supported by all elements of the Michigan cannabis community, was torpedoed by Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and his friends in law enforcement. This happened during the last hours before the legislative session adjourned for the year. That meant the bill died and the whole process had to start again cold turkey, with new GOP legislative leaders running the show.
At that point Senator Rick Jones, the crusty, powerful Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who had been sheriff of Eaton County in another life, (and was loathed by many in the cannabis community), stepped up to the plate. He wanted a “safe” regulated medical marijuana market in Michigan, and he hated the existing system.Former Senator
Rick Jones
To that end, Jones contacted everybody who was anybody in Michigan law enforcement and challenged them to write a bill which they could live with. The result is what passed in 2016. It was complex, control oriented and extreme in the way it tried to tightly supervise everything. The buzz word was “safety” in the most micro-managed sense of the word.
The cannabis community was strongly divided on this one, and some fought the passage of this law tooth and nail. Others, including myself, held our noses and supported it. Our logic was to set the stage for a well funded recreational cannabis legalization ballot initiative in 2018. We figured if the Legislature passed this law; we could use it as the skeleton for our own legalization plan-- and inoculate ourselves from prohibitionist attacks by pointing out that our model came from the Legislature itself.
Many of us who supported Jones’ efforts and helped make this sausage, believed deep down much of the legislation was hokey. We preferred the more loosely regulated 2014 model, in which caregivers would be the primary suppliers to dispensaries. As far as product safety testing was concerned, fighting that one was useless. The vast majority of Michigan legislators knew little about marijuana and many were scared. In order to ease their fears, the concept of rigorous testing was created and promoted, to make them think herb would now be “safe” in a regulated setting.
For me personally, having used untested marijuana illegally for many, many years, the heavy duty safety regimen was a joke, along with other provisions benefiting deep-pocketed corporate players. Some of us however, simply wanted to use weed without the threat of getting busted or harassed. The rest of the details were unimportant.
Yes there is a pattern to all this, because we did our job too well. The idea that untested cannabis is inherently dangerous is so entrenched in the body politic, there is no expectation this will change anytime soon. The law of unintended consequences is galloping rapidly. The Jack in the Box cult of “safety” at any cost has popped out.
These perceptions have led to some dubious episodes in the last year or so.
For better or worse “regulation” of Delta 8 is spilled milk. Whether we like it or not, it is now law, even though there is no proof of any medical harm from the substance.
The economic disaster caused by a massive recall of thousands of pounds of cannabis tested by Viridis Laboratories last year is still not settled. Both Viridis and the CRA blame each other for the debacle. The ongoing litigation promises to be brutal. Is the CRA guilty of overzealous regulation and incompetence? Is Viridis the perp which screwed up badly at it’s Lansing operation? This question will be answered by the Michigan judiciary at a later date.
The CRA does not comment on pending litigation, but Viridis does. In a press release sent by Viridis’ Lansing public relations firm “Byrum and Fisk,” Viridis attorney David Russell of “Swift, Collins and Smith, P.C” stated “we continue to pursue all legal remedies so we can shine a spotlight on MRA’s troubling conduct and improper practices and help ensure the massive disruption and chaos caused by the CRA does not happen again.”
For the record, according to the CRA, there were 18 complaints of adverse reactions from bad Viridis weed. How many of these situations were real or how many were triggered by hysteria when the recall news hit? No one knows. No alleged victims died or suffered permanent injury.
The most cynical exploitation of this public safety craze was a move by the MCMA to destroy the voter approved Michigan medical marijuana caregiver system. This was done to allegedly keep the public safe from untested weed. The real motive was to eliminate competition for the MCMA’s corporate clients. In the fourteen years since caregivers began providing medical marijuana to patients, there is not one recorded incidence of anyone being injured by untested caregiver cannabis. While the MCMA has failed so far in its machinations with the Legislature to change the law; no one expects them to go away.
Ironically, MCMA chief Steve Linder, at a hearing before the CRA on February 16, agreed with Michigan NORML’s Rick Thompson, that the CRA should not be regulating hemp CBD/THC producers. Such regulation could seriously damage MCMA client interests, causing the price of natural grown marijuana to radically drop in cost. Hemp is very cheap to produce and it can be legally shipped from outstate because there is no federal law prohibiting that.
However, the CRA wants to regulate CBD processing because of public safety concerns. Go figure.
