HUNTINGTON WOODS, MI – A couple of years after Michigan legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, I ran my Australian Shepherd puppy at the park, then headed up north for the weekend.
But when I stopped at a rest area, poor Chet appeared to be in a near-coma. I whizzed downstate to my veterinarian, who soon diagnosed the problem: Puppies will eat about anything they find on the ground, and he had swallowed someone’s stash of pot.
“We see this all the time now,” the vet told me. She made him throw up, gave him medication, and the next morning he was good as ever, though I was something like $400 poorer.
Next week, Ohio voters will decide whether they want to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana via a ballot proposal, Proposal 2, similar to the one that passed in Michigan. (The use of marijuana for medical purposes has been legal in both states for years.)
I would not presume to tell Ohioans how to vote. I can say, however, that the issue is more complicated than many realize, because both citizens and state officials in Michigan were not fully prepared for how all of this would unfold.
To some extent, nearly five years after it became fully legal, policy makers still are grappling to understand the complete impact legalized marijuana has or will have.
My personal perspective is this: Five years ago I voted to legalize marijuana, as did 56 percent of all voters. I did so with some misgivings. I have utterly no interest in using pot or any other drug; I tried it twice in the 1970s and didn’t like feeling foggy.
I drive a lot, and don’t want more inebriated people on the roads. But I also recognized that millions were already using marijuana, something that wasn’t about to change. I also thought having the drug supplied by state-regulated facilities was better than trusting in the non-existent quality control of the black market.
Most of all, I didn’t think we had any right to tell adults they couldn’t use the stuff if they wanted to. Especially since they can buy tobacco, which is quite likely to kill them, and it is easier to buy a weapon capable of mass murder than to get a driver’s license.
So Michigan legalized marijuana. Things were chaotic in the first months, since nobody had given much thought to a distribution system. But after a while, the pipeline improved.
There are still some unique hurdles that other businesses do not face. Marijuana may be legal in Michigan; it now is in 23 states that account for 49 percent of America’s population, according to the U.S. Census bureau. But it is still illegal under federal law.
That hasn’t brought squads of federal agents crashing into and raiding dispensaries, as in the days of Prohibition. But that’s a distinct if currently remote possibility. This does mean Michigan marijuana sales are cash only, something that may leave them more prone to robbery and possibly harder to audit.
There’s also some indication that a lot of people in Michigan thought opening a marijuana business was the key to instant riches — only to find out that the market was oversaturated. Some dealers have closed, and one major distributor, Skymint, entered receivership earlier this year. There’s also a huge glut of product: The Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency said the cost of an ounce of the stuff had dropped from $512 an ounce in early 2020 to $80 in early 2023.
It isn’t clear whether marijuana use has contributed to highway mayhem. An Illinois study found that 39.4 percent of Michigan drivers involved in fatal accidents in 2020 had pot in their systems, compared to 26.4 percent two years before, when it wasn’t legal.
But two other studies, one by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, found evidence that marijuana users, unlike those who use alcohol, tend to take more precautions on the road.
What is indisputable, however, is that there has been a huge increase in not only dogs like my Chet but children rushed to emergency rooms, often after ingesting edible forms of the drug.
One thing is clear: States which legalize pot get huge amounts of badly needed revenue. Michigan is expected to realize close to $400 million this year in taxes from pot sales.
That figure has steadily increased. According to an Ohio State University study cited by Cleveland.com, marijuana sales are expected to add at least $182 million to state coffers in the first year after legalization, and rise to $403 million five years later.
And despite claims to the contrary, revenue from alcohol sales in Michigan haven’t decreased.
There are, however, a lot of questions. If Proposal 2 passes in Ohio, Republicans in the legislature have vowed to make changes in it, something that wasn’t an option in Michigan.
While both states are in the industrial Midwest, they are very different politically and perhaps socially as well.
Polls show Proposal 2 far ahead. If it passes next week, about all that’s certain is that interesting times lie ahead.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
