The sheriff who wants to save Michigan’s cannabis industry

Genesee County’s Chris Swanson is running for governor — and he’s got something to say about the pothole tax

Chris Swanson is not the kind of politician you expect to be talking about cannabis.

He’s a sheriff.

He’s spent three decades in Genesee County law enforcement, doing narcotics, human trafficking, corrections and everything in between. He created a task force that has put over 150 child predators behind bars. He famously took off his riot gear and marched alongside protesters in Flint during the George Floyd demonstrations in 2020, an image that went viral and helped launch a national “Walk With Me” movement.

Now he’s running for governor of Michigan — and he wants to repeal the 24% wholesale cannabis tax that has been slowly strangling the state’s legal marijuana industry since it took effect on Jan. 1.

I had a chance to sit down with Swanson recently, and what struck me most wasn’t the political calculation behind his cannabis positions. It was that he genuinely gets it.

He reiterated what he’s been saying publicly — that he’s never been a fan of solving budgetary problems by targeting one industry. It came across like a gut conviction. This industry may have found the advocate it’s been looking for.

And for the record: Swanson told me he’s never smoked weed in his life. I don’t hold it against him.

 

A tax built to crush

Let’s start with what the 24% wholesale tax has actually done to Michigan’s cannabis industry. It’s not pretty.

The tax — formally the Comprehensive Road Funding Tax Act, more commonly called the “pothole tax” — was signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, as part of a bipartisan road funding deal in October 2025.

It isn’t assessed on profit. It’s assessed on wholesale price, so when an ounce of recreational flower sells for as little as $60, operators are paying taxes before they know if they’ll break even. Stack that on top of the existing 10% retail excise tax and 6% sales tax, and Michigan cannabis is now one of the most heavily taxed consumer goods in the state — by a wide margin.

The results have been swift and brutal. Legal sales are already down double digits through the first two months of 2026. Layoffs and closures are accelerating. And the workers who were supposed to benefit from legalization — the budtenders, trimmers, packagers and drivers who make up Michigan’s 39,000-plus cannabis workforce — are being left behind.

 

Swanson is unambiguous

about where he stands

“We cannot balance state budgets on the backs of one industry,” Swanson said. “Excessive taxation drives consumers back to the illicit market and shrinks the legal one.”

Swanson said he is pledging to roll back the 24% wholesale excise tax. He wants a replacement that’s not aimed at a single industry. Road funding is a real problem in Michigan. Swanson doesn’t think cannabis workers and dispensary owners should be fixing potholes alone.

The sheriff’s background gives him an edge that industry advocates don’t have.

“I’ve seen what happens when illegal markets thrive,” Swanson said. “It leads to violence and exploitation.” For a governor’s candidate to connect the dots between an overreaching tax and public safety consequences — in plain language, without hedging — is genuinely unusual.

The cannabis industry has noticed. Michigan Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Robin Schneider publicly praised Swanson almost immediately after he went on the record, calling him bold enough to carry the industry’s message and urging supporters to get behind the momentum. That kind of endorsement from the state’s top cannabis trade group means something.

 

The union card

What makes Swanson genuinely unusual in Michigan’s crowded 2026 governor’s race is what he brings beyond cannabis.

He’s a union member. Not in the way politicians sometimes claim solidarity with labor — he actually carries a card. Swanson is a faculty member at the University of Michigan-Flint, and part of the faculty union.

When he launched his gubernatorial campaign at Mott Community College in February 2025, the room was packed with union leaders who shouted that they would “walk with him” to the governor’s office. He recently appeared on the podcast of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien — a signal that his pro-labor reputation is being taken seriously at the national level and beyond Flint.

For Michigan’s cannabis workers — who have spent the past several years watching union drives get crushed, replacement workers get hired and NLRB charges quietly dropped — a possible governor who understands organized labor is not a small thing.

 

An unusual candidacy

Swanson is a Democratic primary underdog.

He’s running third in polling. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has won multiple statewide races, has a substantial fundraising advantage. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is running as an independent, and the Republican field is competitive.

But Swanson has built his entire career on defying expectations — and on showing up in rooms where people don’t expect to see him.

Michigan legalized recreational marijuana in 2018 on a promise of economic opportunity, social equity and something better than prohibition.

Seven years later, the industry is suffering under a punishing tax structure, workers are getting fired for trying to organize and the companies that were supposed to build careers are treating their employees as the most disposable line item on the balance sheet.

What this industry needs is someone who will walk into the room, understand what’s at stake, and fight for it — even when the fight means going up against their own party’s legacy. Swanson, a sheriff from Flint who has never taken a hit in his life, might just be that person.

Chris Silva writes the Lansterdam column for City Pulse. Tips? Reach him at silvachr@gmail.com.