Katelyn Baker
Well-Known Member
With marijuana and its medical version becoming big business in Colorado and other states, the organizer of today's Capital Conference in downtown Lansing said more than 300 profit-minded Michiganders were registered to learn how they might someday turn the drug into dollars.
In the banquet area of the Radisson Hotel Lansing, they're scheduled to hear from a champion of Michigan's marijuana movement, said convention organizer Rick Thompson of Flint Township, a longtime board member of statewide groups that favor legalizing the drug.
Keynote speaker state Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, who is term-limited and is making one of his last stands as a lawmaker by battling a bill that pits medical users of pot against landlords and apartment managers. It's likely to come up for a vote in the state House this week, he said.
Irwin, whose career in the state House ends Dec. 31, said last week that he hoped to head off what he calls a fresh threat to Michigan's medical-marijuana users. But the trade associations for apartment owners said the bill would reduce their property damage, fire risks,electric bills and complaints about odors resulting from medical-marijuana users who smoke or grow the drug in their units.
The bill is a proposed amendment to Michigan's 2008 voter-approved medical marijuana act to let landlords ban any use of marijuana in apartments. As Senate Bill 72, it passed last week in the state Senate's lame-duck session.
On Friday, Irwin sent an e-mail blast to hundreds of Michiganders on the internet's Safer Access forum - ranging from lawyers and dispensary owners to medical users and Libertarians who favor ending the war on drugs. It was a call to arms against letting the bill pass in the House this week, he said.
In lame-duck session, "the most odious, unpopular things" get passed quickly" unless someone raises the alarm, Irwin said. As he puts it, landlords are telling state lawmakers that "Gee, we've got some tenants who are inconsiderate and they disturb the peaceful tranquility of their neighbors." Irwin said that's no different from someone blasting a stereo or holding a party at 3 a.m. If the bad behavior continues, an apartment owner can use Michigan's existing landlord-tenant laws to evict a bad actor, he said.
"This kind of problem is something for them to work out in the court system rather than adding this hammer to the state (medical) marijuana act and putting sick people out in the street," Irwin said.
Irwin has no reservations about his long-standing support for legalizing marijuana in Michigan, something he favored long before it was politically acceptable. Marijuana "could be a big economic opportunity for Michigan," he said.
"'There's so much to be gained by stopping the nonsense and just taxing this product. But the biggest difference would be ending what happens to thousands of people, whose lives get turned upside down, and all the money we spend locally to break into their homes and charge them and jail them" with marijuana offenses, he said.
The bill, which landlords and apartment managers across the state have tried for years to get passed, would amend the state's medical marijuana act to make it far easier to evict renters who smoke or grow marijuana in their units. If it passes, landlords could duck the costly and time-consuming process of evicting through court orders. Instead, they could simply place wording in lease agreements to say that any use or growing of marijuana anywhere on their properties would subject a tenant to immediate eviction.
The state's big landlord groups have said in hearings for two years that they need a statewide rule to help them avoid not only complaints about odors but also the risk of fires from the high-powered lights that growers use in cultivating cannabis, as well as the growers' daunting electricity consumption and the potential mold or water damage caused when tenants turn apartments into quasi-greenhouses.
Although he declined to talk about the pending bill, apartment owner Jerry Amber - vice president of Amber Properties, which owns 1,400 units in Oakland County - said his firm expects all tenants to abide by the company's "House Rules" that state: "Be a good neighbor and comply with all ... state and federal law."
To Amber, that includes federal drug laws and their blanket prohibition of marijuana, whether it's medicinal or not.
The website of Grand Rapids-based Rental Property Owners Association - which bills itself as the state's largest real-estate investor group - says "there is more gray around this topic than a cloudy day." It cites numerous legal tactics that landlords can use to keep tenants from growing, selling or smoking marijuana in rental properties, although all require either civil or criminal court actions.
Other rental groups cite an opinion by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who declared in 2012 that the owner of an apartment building can prohibit marijuana smoking and growing "anywhere within the facility," and that such a ban would not violate the state medical marijuana act.
Arguably, some of the would-be entrepreneurs meeting in Lansing might consider the pending bill a business opportunity. Why not operate and advertise apartment units just for medical-marijuana users, and see whether they flock to a new form of rental property?
That would be a good turn of events in the marketplace, said Farmington Hills lawyer Dominic Silvestri, a specialist in real-estate and small-business law. Otherwise, "it may be difficult for medical-marijuana users to find a residence without buying their own house," he said.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Medical Marijuana In Apartments? New Bill Might Nix It
Author: Bill Laitner
Contact: 313-222-6400
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Website: Detroit Free Press
In the banquet area of the Radisson Hotel Lansing, they're scheduled to hear from a champion of Michigan's marijuana movement, said convention organizer Rick Thompson of Flint Township, a longtime board member of statewide groups that favor legalizing the drug.
Keynote speaker state Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, who is term-limited and is making one of his last stands as a lawmaker by battling a bill that pits medical users of pot against landlords and apartment managers. It's likely to come up for a vote in the state House this week, he said.
Irwin, whose career in the state House ends Dec. 31, said last week that he hoped to head off what he calls a fresh threat to Michigan's medical-marijuana users. But the trade associations for apartment owners said the bill would reduce their property damage, fire risks,electric bills and complaints about odors resulting from medical-marijuana users who smoke or grow the drug in their units.
The bill is a proposed amendment to Michigan's 2008 voter-approved medical marijuana act to let landlords ban any use of marijuana in apartments. As Senate Bill 72, it passed last week in the state Senate's lame-duck session.
On Friday, Irwin sent an e-mail blast to hundreds of Michiganders on the internet's Safer Access forum - ranging from lawyers and dispensary owners to medical users and Libertarians who favor ending the war on drugs. It was a call to arms against letting the bill pass in the House this week, he said.
In lame-duck session, "the most odious, unpopular things" get passed quickly" unless someone raises the alarm, Irwin said. As he puts it, landlords are telling state lawmakers that "Gee, we've got some tenants who are inconsiderate and they disturb the peaceful tranquility of their neighbors." Irwin said that's no different from someone blasting a stereo or holding a party at 3 a.m. If the bad behavior continues, an apartment owner can use Michigan's existing landlord-tenant laws to evict a bad actor, he said.
"This kind of problem is something for them to work out in the court system rather than adding this hammer to the state (medical) marijuana act and putting sick people out in the street," Irwin said.
Irwin has no reservations about his long-standing support for legalizing marijuana in Michigan, something he favored long before it was politically acceptable. Marijuana "could be a big economic opportunity for Michigan," he said.
"'There's so much to be gained by stopping the nonsense and just taxing this product. But the biggest difference would be ending what happens to thousands of people, whose lives get turned upside down, and all the money we spend locally to break into their homes and charge them and jail them" with marijuana offenses, he said.
The bill, which landlords and apartment managers across the state have tried for years to get passed, would amend the state's medical marijuana act to make it far easier to evict renters who smoke or grow marijuana in their units. If it passes, landlords could duck the costly and time-consuming process of evicting through court orders. Instead, they could simply place wording in lease agreements to say that any use or growing of marijuana anywhere on their properties would subject a tenant to immediate eviction.
The state's big landlord groups have said in hearings for two years that they need a statewide rule to help them avoid not only complaints about odors but also the risk of fires from the high-powered lights that growers use in cultivating cannabis, as well as the growers' daunting electricity consumption and the potential mold or water damage caused when tenants turn apartments into quasi-greenhouses.
Although he declined to talk about the pending bill, apartment owner Jerry Amber - vice president of Amber Properties, which owns 1,400 units in Oakland County - said his firm expects all tenants to abide by the company's "House Rules" that state: "Be a good neighbor and comply with all ... state and federal law."
To Amber, that includes federal drug laws and their blanket prohibition of marijuana, whether it's medicinal or not.
The website of Grand Rapids-based Rental Property Owners Association - which bills itself as the state's largest real-estate investor group - says "there is more gray around this topic than a cloudy day." It cites numerous legal tactics that landlords can use to keep tenants from growing, selling or smoking marijuana in rental properties, although all require either civil or criminal court actions.
Other rental groups cite an opinion by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who declared in 2012 that the owner of an apartment building can prohibit marijuana smoking and growing "anywhere within the facility," and that such a ban would not violate the state medical marijuana act.
Arguably, some of the would-be entrepreneurs meeting in Lansing might consider the pending bill a business opportunity. Why not operate and advertise apartment units just for medical-marijuana users, and see whether they flock to a new form of rental property?
That would be a good turn of events in the marketplace, said Farmington Hills lawyer Dominic Silvestri, a specialist in real-estate and small-business law. Otherwise, "it may be difficult for medical-marijuana users to find a residence without buying their own house," he said.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Medical Marijuana In Apartments? New Bill Might Nix It
Author: Bill Laitner
Contact: 313-222-6400
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Website: Detroit Free Press