Schuette: A necessary fear?

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When a former commercial real estate professional turned medical marijuana dispensary owner and lobbyist stopped by the City Pulse office last week, naturally the political and judicial climate around dispensaries arose.

Ryan Richmond owns Relief Choices, a dispensary with three locations throughout the state (including one on Michigan Avenue in Lansing). Unlike some of his colleagues, he’s not quite as threatened by Attorney General Bill Schuette’s vigilance against the voter-approved 2008 ballot initiative.

“As a dispensary owner, a little bit of fear with Schuette isn’t all bad — it’s a necessary fear,” he said Wednesday.

Why? Richmond thinks it’ll clean up the market. If there’s a higher premium placed on operating a reputable shop with state-of-the-art security, clean facilities and associates with even cleaner criminal backgrounds, Richmond said, “It’s only going to change public sentiment” about dispensaries. Richmond’s business on Michigan Avenue also has an innocuous blue and orange sign out front and the lobby is, well, bland. Conspicuous neon green cannabis signs also bother Richmond.

Of course, Richmond’s motives are partly self-serving because it “limits my competition.” But not totally: “When Schuette’s out there putting fear in the market, it limits some of these (less reputable) shops from opening.”

Richmond also is a board member of the Marijuana Patients Organization, an advocacy group with about 6,000 members; the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Association; and Sensible Michigan, a medical marijuana political action committee. Richmond said he’s also teamed up with the Karoub Associates lobbying firm on his cannabis efforts at the Capitol. 

Richmond’s main focus is on dispensaries. When Schuette held a press conference Aug. 10 with a variety of lawmakers, police officials and doctors to introduce a planned introduction of bills (they say it’s coming this fall), dispensaries were only narrowly included in the package. In fact, Schuette’s proposal would give local control to regulating dispensaries. 

Nonetheless, Schuette told City Pulse that he’s waiting for the court system to decide whether dispensaries are illegal. He was not shy about referring to them as “pot shops” and said they’re “creating easy access to a gateway drug.”

Richmond’s theory is this: Reputable dispensaries will not and should not cower in fear spread by this attorney general who lobbied against Proposal 1 when he was a state Court of Appeals judge in 2008. Schuette implies that anyone who owns a dispensary is illegally dealing drugs next to schools and churches. Richmond concedes that some dispensaries are operated more professionally than others. And if any are run as Schuette suggests, Richmond said they don’t belong in the market. “A lot of people own dispensaries who shouldn’t own ice cream stores.”


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