METRO DETROIT COMMUNITIES SUED OVER MEDICAL POT

Community officials across the region have spent countless hours in
the last year debating how to regulate medical marijuana.

Now, some are spending legal fees defending lawsuits.

Royal Oak, whose ban on growing medical marijuana starts today, was
sued last week, and another lawsuit is expected to be filed against
the city this week. Also sued recently by medical-marijuana patients
in metro Detroit were Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Bloomfield
Township, Livonia and Lyon Township.

"This is going to keep happening, and we're going to spend legal fees
while we're laying off police officers," Royal Oak City Commissioner
Jim Rasor said.

Rasor said the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act "is perfectly clear" in
establishing Michiganders' rights to use, grow and distribute medical
marijuana. But he was in the minority of the 4-3 vote on the city's
ordinance change, passed last month, to ban growing medical marijuana
in Royal Oak.

After dozens of citizens signed a petition asking for a complete ban
on the drug, city commissioners sided with allowing its use but
banning its cultivation, saying that the state law voters passed in
2008 was vague and could lead to drug dealing in the city.

Michigan's new attorney general, Bill Schuette, said through a
spokesman last week that he agreed.

"The law is an absolute disaster," Schuette spokesman John Selleck
said. "It has created the No. 1 growth industry in Michigan, but
these are not the kind of jobs we need. Our attorneys are looking at
the issue right now to determine the best ways the law could be clarified."

It's too soon to say when the attorney general might issue an opinion
on medical marijuana, he said. Such an opinion would not be binding
on the courts, but it would help guide community leaders on the
issue, Royal Oak City Attorney Dave Gillam said.

Gillam said he and the city's planning director hope to resolve a
mushrooming legal quandary with their ordinance change: whether
residents who are state-approved patients can continue to grow the
drug in their homes and be grandfathered in to the new city zoning
amendment, if they've grown the drug before, Gillam said.

Royal Oak officials admitted that they failed to anticipate the
problem of grandfathering existing growers, who are guaranteed
confidentiality by the state Medical Marijuana Act, Grosse Pointe
attorney Paul Tylenda said.

He represents Steven Greene, a resident of Lyon Township, who filed a
lawsuit last month against the community to challenge its total ban
on medical marijuana use, Tylenda said.

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COURT CASES INVOLVING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

These communities have been sued over ordinances restricting medical marijuana:

Bloomfield Township -- Sued last year in Oakland County Circuit Court
by two anonymous residents who said the city's requirement that
state-approved patients register with the police department violated
privacy provisions in the state law that allows medical marijuana.

Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills and Livonia -- Sued in December in Wayne
County Circuit Court by a Birmingham couple in their 60s, who said
the communities' ordinances amounted to bans on medical marijuana.
The couple said they want to use marijuana in their home, take it to
a private club in Bloomfield Hills to control the wife's symptoms
during long social events, and grow it in a warehouse they own in
Livonia. Lawyers from the Detroit-based Michigan chapter of the
American Civil Liberties Union represent them.

Lyon Township -- Sued last month in Oakland County Circuit Court by a
resident who received a notice from the township Dec. 20, saying he
had 30 days to destroy marijuana plants inside his mobile home. The
lawsuit said he is HIV positive and uses marijuana to counteract
nausea caused by his medications.

Royal Oak -- Sued Thursday in Oakland County Circuit Court by a
resident who said he suffers from cancer and back ailments. His
lawsuit said Royal Oak's ban on growing medical marijuana and other
restrictions conflict with the state law that allows medical marijuana.