Marijuana Blog

Hidden within the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2014 proposed budget is a section that will allow Michigan’s medical marihuana fund to be used to pay for county-level law enforcement agencies to hunt down the very people that paid into the fund.

 

The allocation is officially known as Section 728 of the budget proposal contained within Senate Bill 190. It provides for an allocation of up to $3 million earmarked “for discretionary grants to county law enforcement departments for education about and enforcement of the Michigan medical marihuana program”. The medical marihuana program (MMP) is administered by the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA), who refuses to release information on the amount of money in this fund without a Freedom of Information Act filing.

 

Section 728 was not included in the first version of SB 190 and the House version of the appropriations bill contains no similar language. According to the Senate Fiscal Agency, this section was inserted by Sen. Jansen, the bill’s sponsor, purportedly at the request of LARA’s administration. SB 190 has been passed out of the Appropriations Committee and now faces a vote of the full Senate on April 25. Both the House and Senate versions of the Appropriations Bill will be reconciled in Conference Committee, where sections can be debated and removed.

 

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