Lansing Council passes recreational weed regulations 

TUESDAY, Oct. 1 — The Lansing City Council pushed through its recreational marijuana ordinance on Monday before the deadline, but two Council members opposed it after the majority failed to include any provisions for social equity. 

Brian T. Jackson from the 4th Ward said the ordinance had been brokered between Mayor Andy Schor and Council President Carol Wood and they could either take it or leave it. And he was going to leave it. 

“The lack of a social equity piece makes it impossible for me to support this,” Jackson said. He also said the new ordinance lacked transparency and opportunities for most of the Council to give input, including over limits on dispensaries and microbusinesses that he found arbitrary. 

At-Large Councilwoman Kathie Dunbar continued her protest of the new ordinance, particularly the missed opportunity of a social equity clause or statutory preference for local business owners. “There are people in the community who have been targeted by overzealous prosecution. There are folks who can’t get jobs.” 

The other six members, including Councilman Peter Spadafore, who had supported a social equity provision, supported the ordinance, arguing they wanted to have something in place to avoid being unable to have any local regulations in place before the recreational dispensaries begin operation in November. 

Wood defended the process, noting that the Public Safety Committee that amended the ordinance from Schor’s initial proposal held public hearings in the Council Chambers this summer, but few people came. “It is better to go back and revise this if we need to add to it,” she said.  

The new ordinance allows for the potential number of dispensaries or provisioning centers to increase from 25 to 28 retail locations. The first 25 will have been given a license for medical marijuana and first dibs on a recreational license. It also allows four marijuana social clubs and four microbusinesses, which grow, distribute and sell to a small base of customers. 

The wide restrictions barring cannabis businesses near places of worship and schools was expanded to include all of the city’s parks. 

The state gives discounts to applicants who live in cities that it has designated for social equity. Applicants qualify if they’ve grown marijuana for medical marijuana patients, had an arrest for marijuana and lived in their community for at least five years. Dunbar had proposed mirroring the state’s discounts when handing out new licenses. 

David Harns, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, said the state used two rigid markers in determining which cities qualified — whether the number of arrests in the county where a city resides were higher than the state average, and whether the poverty rate in those cities exceeded a certain threshold. 

In an odd twist, East Lansing residents qualified for state social equity benefits because of the city’s large number of independent students who are living on student loans or stipends and considered low-income. Lansing failed to qualify because its poverty rate was lower, despite more visible signs of poverty.