As Michigan goes through the transition after voters said “yes” to legalizing recreational marijuana last November, there’s a bit of a “haze,” as the Ford School’s Tom Ivacko puts it, on policy in "‘Haze’ abounds as Michigan struggles to regulate recreational cannabis."
Ivacko, the associate director of the Center on Local, State, and Urban Policy, spoke with Rachelle Wilson of Wisconsin Watch about the transition to recreational legalization and the regulation challenges the state is facing; despite having legalized medical marijuana 10 years ago, Ivacko categorized those regulations as “complicated and confusing.”
Through CLOSUP’s Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS), Ivacko found that many communities would rather not opt in to allowing marijuana retail stores, despite the state revenue that comes with it. “If a chief of police or county sheriff feels it’s important to follow federal law, and a county administrator or a city mayor feels it’s important to follow state law, well, that’s a tough place to be for public officials,” Ivacko said. “And so, opting out, you know, is a way to avoid those kinds of challenges.”
Read the article on Wisconsin Watch.
Tom joined CLOSUP at its founding in the fall of 2001 and serves as associate director of the Center. He also oversees the Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) program and has been the lead or co-author on more than 50 MPPS publications covering a wide range of state and local government policy topics.
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