According to a House Fiscal Agency summary of the draft budget, it looks like a big chunk of the $33.1 million to increase the departments budget for 2018 will go toward increasing marijuana enforcement.
The agency is allocating almost $8.8 million to hiring 48 full-time employees that can assist in medical cannabis licensing oversight.
Last year the Medical Marijuana Facilities Licensing Act became a law and along with it came new licensure mandates on marijuana growers, transporters, and retailers.
Matt Abel, executive director of Michigan NORML, commented, “We’re moving into licensing a newly regulated business, so it’s expected that we’d need inspectors to insure regulatory compliance.”
He also said, “I’m disappointed about how much law enforcement resources have been used to prosecute medical marijuana patients.”
Apparently, as documented by Leafly in a report, Michigan State Crime Lab officials have altered evidence in secret that allowed prosecutors in recent years to charge patients with serious crimes. The workers mislabeled medical cannabis as synthetic THS just so they could put 180,000 legal patients at risk of having a felony charge.
According to a report in Michigan Capitol Confidential, a free-market oriented news blog, out of the 48 employees to be hired, 30 will be working in investigations, 8 will be in forensic science, 7 in commercial vehicle enforcement, and 3 in intelligence operations.
