The Midwest Proves Fertile Ground for Marijuana Reform, Despite Rabid Republican Agenda

The Republican hardliners who have taken over several Midwestern state governments have largely stalled efforts to modify marijuana laws there this year. But after more than a decade of pressure from grassroots activists, the region is beginning to show some change.

"The Midwest is starting to catch up," says Jill Harris, a policy director at the Drug Policy Alliance. "Just the fact that it's a conversation now, when it wasn't five years ago, is progress."

The most dramatic advances have come in Michigan, where voters legalized medical marijuana in a 2008 referendum, and in Kentucky, which in early March reduced the maximum penalty for possession of less than half a pound from a year in prison to 45 days. Offenders who are considered likely to appear in court and don't do anything to make the police officer who catches them think they're a threat will get a summons instead of being arrested.

Michigan's medical law does not permit dispensaries to provide cannabis to patients, emphasizes Keith Stroup, counsel for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Nonetheless, the state has at least 150 that do, calling themselves "compassion centers," says Tim Beck, political director of the Michigan Association of Compassion Centers. It has registered 64,000 patients and 25,000 caregivers, and another 24,000 applications are pending.

However, medical marijuana is facing a backlash from Gov. Rick Snyder's administration, and the state is sharply divided regionally. Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Traverse City allow openly run dispensaries, according to Beck, with Ann Arbor's ordinance limiting their number to 20; Detroit and Flint are neutral; and the Detroit suburbs of Livonia, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Hills have banned them. In Oakland County, Detroit's affluent and Republican northwestern suburbs, "the prosecutors and the county sheriff have declared war on medical marijuana," he says.

Beck believes the overall law is safe, though, because Michigan requires a three-quarters majority for the legislature to nullify a ballot initiative, and the Republicans include deficit hawks and libertarians as well as "social conservatives still fighting the Vietnam war." But key state legislators have said some stronger regulations are likely, such as banning on-premises consumption in dispensaries.

In June 2010, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration subpoenaed the records of seven patients from compassion centers in Lansing, as part of an investigation into what it considers drug dealing. State health-department workers refused to turn them over, as the medical-marijuana law makes it a misdemeanor to release confidential patient records, but when Republican Attorney General Bill Scheutte took office in January, he agreed to go along if the workers were immunized against prosecution.

This and other issues are in litigation. Scheutte has also moved to prosecute some patients, accusing them of "attempting to exploit the law to essentially legalize marijuana."

"I'm not going to deny it," says Beck. "It is an interim step to legalization. It's a model for tax and regulate."

In Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana, the three states whose antiworker legislation has dominated domestic news this year, medical-marijuana bills have been pushed onto the back burner.

In Ohio, three medical-marijuana bills have been introduced, but Ed Orlett, a former state representative now working with the DPA, says it is unlikely they'll even get a committee hearing.

The bills take a "middle of the road" approach, says Tonya Davis of the Ohio Patient Network. They would let patients grow their own herb, but are intended to "prevent the storefronts from popping up."