It's well-known that Michigan's medical marijuana system is short on provisions. Simply put, there's not enough stuff available for the near 300,000 medical marijuana patients in the state.
One strategy has been to allow caregiver-grown cannabis to be sold into the system for a while. After several months of push and pull about that in the legal system, provisioning centers can still sell their caregiver-derived supplies, but they can't buy any more of it.
None of that has changed lately, but it was very cool last week when a Detroit News editorial advocated for caregiver-grown marijuana to be sold in the medical system in order to allay supply issues. Good for the folks who handle the editorials over there to step out on the issue. At this point, nobody knows where that idea is going.
Another event of interest on that subject is that Oregon just passed a law that would allow the overstocked marijuana system there to be sold and exported to other states where marijuana is legal. But it's not going to happen anytime soon. For one thing, the Oregon law requires that shipments only go to states that have passed a similar law allowing the import of marijuana. For another thing, growers in Michigan are already angry about caregivers selling into the system. It's not likely they're going to welcome stuff imported from another state.
Sooner or later, cross-state marijuana commerce will be introduced. On the West Coast it makes sense. Marijuana is legal along the entire Pacific Coast of North America. Oregon has an estimated 1.3 million pounds of unsold supply. Michigan doesn't have enough. There is a formula for a solution there.
Prognosticators see this as more pressure for some kind of federal accommodation of marijuana. That sounds just fine.
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