When Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved marijuana for medical use in 2008, the ballot measure was seen as a turning point after decades of prohibition, signaling that patients should be able to access cannabis without fear.
But that’s not what happened.
What followed, according to a new memoir by Detroit-area entrepreneur Ryan Richmond, was something very different.
In Capone of Cannabis, which was released this week, Richmond recounts how law enforcement agencies and prosecutors across Southeast Michigan responded to legalization. Instead of adapting to the will of voters, they aggressively resisted it, using raids, asset seizures, selective prosecutions, and intimidation to shut down early cannabis businesses and punish the people behind them.
Richmond found out the hard way. An early pioneer in the medical cannabis industry, Richmond was harassed, repeatedly raided and charged, and ultimately sent to federal prison in West Virginia for having the nerve to follow the will of voters.
“We were legal on paper,” Richmond writes in the book. “But legitimacy didn’t stand a chance against a badge and a grudge.”
Richmond’s book blends memoir and investigative reporting, drawing on court records, media coverage, and his own experience as a co-founder of Clinical Relief, one of Michigan’s first medical marijuana dispensaries. The result is a detailed account of the chaotic years before the state created a formal regulatory system.
It was a period when cannabis businesses operated in legal gray areas while law enforcement continued to treat them as criminals.
‘Too many guns and too many raids’
Richmond entered the cannabis industry almost accidentally. At the time Michigan passed its medical marijuana law, he was working in commercial real estate. In late 2009, he received a call from entrepreneurs looking to open a dispensary.
“I was just another bored real estate guy who got involved,” Richmond tells Metro Times in an interview.
Clinical Relief opened in Ferndale in 2010, describing itself as a professional, patient-focused operation. There was no stoner imagery or neon pot leaves. Richmond writes that the goal was to show that cannabis could operate like any other legitimate business.
Instead, the dispensary became a target.
Less than three months after opening, Clinical Relief was raided in a heavily militarized operation involving armored vehicles, assault rifles, and masked officers. Richmond describes patients being thrown to the ground and staff treated as violent criminals.
In the book, Richmond describes elderly patients and people with serious medical conditions being detained at gunpoint while attempting to legally obtain their medicine. They included a breast cancer survivor who was tackled to the floor and a military veteran with PTSD who was held at gunpoint, both of whom were getting relief from medical cannabis.
“This wasn’t about public safety,” Richmond writes. “This was about sending a message.”
The raids, he writes, resembled tactical operations typically reserved for violent crime, not inspections of voter-approved medical businesses operating openly with local approval.
The raid was only the beginning. Over the next several years, Richmond says he and his partners experienced relentless enforcement pressure.
One of the raids, Richmond writes, was followed by a personal tragedy for his business partner’s family. Just days after officers stormed the dispensary and raided the homes of employees and relatives, his partner’s father, Sal Agro, who had worked part-time at the shop and helped run the front desk, suffered a massive heart attack and died. Richmond says the death came in the immediate aftermath of the raids on the family’s homes, where armed officers confronted his wife, children, and grandchildren.
“We had a raid every 26 days for four years,” Richmond says. “I think I was charged 10 times.”
In the book, Richmond describes how raids often occurred on Friday evenings, when dispensaries were most likely to have cash on hand, and how seizures were frequently followed by dropped or reduced charges.
Richmond also describes officers pointing guns at employees, rifling through patient records, and seizing cash and property even when no marijuana was found, actions that he says were meant to intimidate, rather than enforce the law.
“There were too many guns and too many raids,” Richmond says. “It was a lot.”
In August 2014, six Detroit cops were suspended following accusations that they stole evidence from a medical marijuana dispensary operating out of a house on the west side. Other dispensary owners said Detroit police did the same thing to them.
After the initial burst of media attention, Richmond says he largely stopped speaking publicly about cannabis.
“I probably made zero comments for the next five years,” he says. “My wife was really supportive, but she saw the bullshit. I became a father, and I couldn’t do this anymore.”
His book reveals what the media didn’t know at the time, and the details are shocking.
Asset forfeiture as a weapon
One of the book’s central allegations is that asset forfeiture, which is the practice of seizing cash and property suspected of being connected to crime, became a routine enforcement tactic against cannabis businesses.
“I think a lot of the main theme is police power,” Richmond says of the book. “They took asset forfeiture and then started calling it 280E of the tax code.”
Section 280E of the federal tax code bars businesses that traffic in illegal drugs from deducting ordinary business expenses. While marijuana remained illegal at the federal level, Richmond argues that prosecutors and tax authorities weaponized 280E to punish legal cannabis operators in Michigan, even as enforcement priorities shifted nationally.
In Capone of Cannabis, Richmond writes that asset seizures often occurred without judicial oversight, leaving businesses financially crippled long before any case was resolved.
“Justice gets priced out,” he writes. “Pay to play, or get shut down.”
Richmond says he ultimately challenged his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it.
Richmond’s attorney believes he may be the only American sent to prison over the application of 280E to a cannabis business.
“I was innocent,” Richmond says. “And I still believe that.”
Selective enforcement and ‘optics’
Throughout the book, Richmond raises questions about selective prosecution, alleging that prosecutors and law enforcement focused on optics, not evidence, when deciding who to charge.
In one passage, he writes that some individuals connected to dispensary operations avoided charges altogether, while others were aggressively prosecuted.
“Optics matter,” Richmond writes. “Charging the wrong person doesn’t serve the narrative.”
While Richmond doesn’t claim to know the motivations behind every charging decision, he argues the pattern had a chilling effect on the industry, driving many early operators out of cannabis entirely.
“The goal was to scare people,” he says. “And it worked.”
The cost of regulatory failure
Michigan did not create a comprehensive licensing system for medical marijuana businesses until years after legalization. In the meantime, patients, caregivers, and dispensary operators were left dealing with contradictory court rulings, local moratoriums, and hostile enforcement.
Richmond argues that the state’s failure to regulate created the conditions for abuse.
“Voters passed the law,” he says. “But the system never caught up.”
That gap, he says, exposed people to criminal liability despite clear voter intent, which is a common theme throughout the book.
“I started out thinking this was just about state enforcement,” Richmond says. “But there were much bigger forces and power at play.”
From cannabis to prison
Richmond was ultimately sentenced to two years and served time in federal prison.
“They put me in a cage in West Virginia,” he says.
After his release, he left the state’s medical cannabis industry. He later founded Hempwell, a hemp-based pet wellness company that now sells products through major retailers.
But the story never left him.
Richmond says he wrote Capone of Cannabis primarily for his children, who are now 11 and 9.
“I wrote the book so my kids could understand the story someday,” he says. “The goal was getting the story out.”
While the book is deeply personal, Richmond says its message extends far beyond Detroit or Michigan.
“It’s definitely a Detroit story,” he says. “But it’s really an American story. It could have happened anywhere.”
A reckoning with legalization’s early years
Today, Michigan has one of the largest cannabis markets in the country. Dispensaries operate openly, taxes go to state and local governments, and marijuana enforcement has largely faded into the background.
In November 2018, Michigan voters approved the legalization of cannabis for adult use, allowing thousands of new businesses to legally open. Last year, recreational dispensaries rang up $3.17 billion in sales in 2025, down from $3.27 billion in 2024, a decline of about $100 million, or 3.1%. The industry employs more than 41,200 workers.
Richmond argues that progress came at a cost that was paid by early operators who were crushed before the industry was fully regulated.
“We were the test cases,” he writes. “And once they were done with us, the state moved on.”