Michigan marijuana dispensaries won’t run out of pot after state offers help

Licensed medical marijuana dispensaries got a break Wednesday, ending a mini-panic over a shortage of marijuana from licensed growers.

A new resolution that will be considered by the Medical Marijuana Licensing Board next week will allow licensed dispensaries to continue to purchase, test and sell marijuana from registered caregivers, who have been supplying dispensaries while state-licensed growers get up and running to produce usable marijuana.

Prior to the announcement, the licensed dispensaries had 30 days to sell all their marijuana products from caregivers and then transition to getting product from licensed growers. The dispensary owners were supposed to destroy whatever was left over from caregivers.

A problem developed, however, when the 12 licensed marijuana growers in the state didn’t have enough mature product to supply dispensaries. It takes up to six months for a marijuana plant to grow, mature and produce the flower sold in dispensaries.

That left dispensary owners in the position of having spent $66,000 in regulatory assessments, on top of $10,000 in other local and state costs, and being unable to stay open because they had no product.

The resolution will give owners some welcome breathing room, said Stuart Carter, owner of Utopia Gardens dispensary in Detroit. [Read more at Detroit Free Press]