Seventy Michigan Medical Cannabis Provisioning Centers Shut Down

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]M[/dropcap]ore than 70 Michigan-based provisioning centers were shut down as of Dec. 31, 2018, due to the deadline issued by lawmakers that requires all cannabis businesses to obtain a state license. But many businesses feel that the deadline set is unfair and said that they should have received their license months ago.

Operators, distributors as well as consumers of medical cannabis are all in a precarious situation at the moment—dispensaries that were already in service, attending to thousands of patients are having to wait for the authority to approve their licenses, while patients who were already on medical cannabis are now uncertain as to where to acquire their medication.

“If you’re going to open any of them, this is the place that needs to be open right here,” said Allison Fuller, a customer of Holistic Health Wayne told WXYZ. “There’s so many cancer patients that come here for Rick Simpson oil, and know they have nowhere to go. So there are actually people that are dying that have nowhere to go for their medication.”

They will “probably have to revert to the black market or to the caregiver system,” said Barton Morris, Principal attorney at the Cannabis Legal Group. “Those dispensaries that have been operating under that temporary operation have to get a state license in order to continue to distribute marijuana.” Provisioning centers have local approval, but are still waiting on state approval. “The applications still haven’t come up yet to the marijuana licensing board and others have been simply denied,” Morris said.

Businesses were expected to apply for a state license on Feb. 15, 2018. The bills that were signed into law in late December 2018 further complicate the already chaotic situation. The new law would make it illegal for any unlicensed cannabis provisioning center to continue operation after June 1. The law doesn’t replace the Dec. 31 deadline set by the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) for unlicensed businesses to shut down or risk not getting a state license at all.

LARA has until December 2019 to develop the rules and regulations for the new recreational market and legal cannabis is expected to become commercially available for sale in early 2020.