MICHIGAN'S MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The Growing Pot Economy

Opportunities Ripen for New Businesses

The tailspin may be over, but no one's suggesting that bedrock
industries of the Michigan economy like cars and real estate are
headed for boom times again.

The Michigan marijuana economy, on the other hand, appears to be
going gangbusters.

Once largely underground, activity linked to the cultivation and use
of pot is now in full public view thanks to voter approval in 2008 of
marijuana use for medicinal purposes.

Equipment manufacturers, retailers, doctors, lawyers and publishers
are suddenly advertising, hanging up shingles, opening storefronts
and building growing equipment all over the state.

But suppliers of the newly defined medicine -- the certified
caregivers who can grow up to 12 plants a year for as many as five
clients -- are, so far, less visible in part because the distinction
between legal commerce and criminal activity isn't always clear.

"There's a whole lot going on," said Matthew Abel, a Detroit attorney
who has become a sort of medical marijuana specialist, "and it's
going to keep growing."

Like a weed.

Medical Pot Opportunities Flourish

Rick Ferris worked 25 years in construction until a debilitating leg
condition took him off ladders. Then he got into landscaping and was
doing OK until 2008, when "every laid-off guy with a truck" in
southeast Michigan started mowing lawns.

But Ferris isn't complaining. In fact, things are looking up at Big
Daddy's, site of his latest venture, an Oak Park facility to
manufacture hydroponic growing systems. The kind used for growing marijuana.

Ferris, 46, is one of an increasing number of Michiganders looking to
cash in on last year's voter-approved initiative that legalized the
use of medical marijuana. In addition to his manufacturing operation
(which shares space with the still-operating landscape business),
Ferris is set to publish next month the first issue of the Michigan
Medical Marijuana magazine.

So far, so good, he said in a recent interview.

Since getting under way in the spring, Ferris has hired five
employees, three of them full-time. He has sold at least 140
hydroponic (soilless) growing systems and said without them, the
landscaping business would have closed.

"I figured it was either jump in front or be left behind," he said.

Nobody can say how many of his fellow Michiganders are looking to
make a living in the legal marijuana trade. But no one questions that
the number is expanding rapidly.

In the first six months they were available, Michigan's Department of
Community Health issued 5,100 certificates for the legal use of
marijuana for people with chronic or debilitating illness. That
number is expected to climb, although no one is guessing how high.

In the meantime, activists and entrepreneurs are looking for ways to
make pot available to those who need it and to cash in. Or both.

In Southfield, a four-doctor medical practice opened in May that
specializes in patients who require certification to legally use
marijuana. It calls itself the Michigan Medical Marijuana Certification Center.

The center just hired four more employees and now have 11, including
the doctors, said the firm's office manager, who asked that his name
not be published.

The office manager said he recognized, as a medical marijuana patient
himself, the need and opportunity for a specialized practice after an
unpleasant experience with another clinic. But he's unsure what the
prospects are for the long run because the rules governing medical
marijuana are such a muddle that many potential growers and patients
might steer clear.

"It could be really good for Michigan's economy if they clarified the
statute," he said.

Matthew Abel, a Detroit attorney and erstwhile Green Party political
candidate, said the medical pot law has been such a boon for his
business he might "finally have to hire some staff."

Abel said the rush has come in three waves, first from patients
inquiring about certification, then from caregivers (those authorized
under the law to grow marijuana for patients) and lately from people
interested in how someone might set up a retail sales operation or
dispensary. His position: "My feeling is that anything is legal that
isn't illegal."

Of course, much of the potential profit in marijuana-related commerce
lies in selling the stuff. But Abel points out that the scale of
sales permitted under Michigan statute appear aimed at keeping
commerce at a low level.

Caregivers are authorized to possess up to a dozen plants for each of
five clients and be reasonably compensated.

Larger commercial operations might be possible if a group of medical
marijuana caregivers formed a cooperative, but no one in Michigan,
including law enforcement, is exactly sure how.

Which might explain why none of the operations currently soliciting
Michigan marijuana customers online returned calls from the Free
Press over the last week.

Earlier this fall in Troy, an entrepreneur who told city officials he
planned to set up grow rooms at a facility on Rochester Road was
informed by the city attorney such use was illegal under federal law.

Two weeks ago, in a posting on the Michigan Medical Marijuana
Association's Web site, he said he's going to do it, anyway.

That frontier spirit is not uncommon in the emerging world of legal
drug trafficking.

Another posting on the MMMA Web site announces the launch of an
enterprise that will "track costs and PAY TAXES for MM related transactions."

"Although no money has been made yet, I have had a ton of fun, never
smoked so much killer weed in my life," the president of the
enterprise, which is a legally registered business, reported.