The state of MMMA (2008) patients & caregivers in 2024

It seems as if our medical initiative has somehow come off of the rails my friends and the hits just keep coming. Even Big Canna has given up on medical via that dirty 2016 legislative venture into the Lansing based medical marijuana facility licensing/regulatory scheme in recent years. Lume Cannabis Co., "The largest Single State Operator in the nation". has now given up on medical completely as they keep expanding and making $$$ in the rec market. How could that honestly be a good business decision? You'd think there would have at least been some honest effort to reform that game (MMFLA 2016) as so many of the founding lawyers, politicians and lobbyists were subsequently prosecuted and convicted no? Especially prior to spawning the 2018 recreational licensing/regulatory scheme being sold. What exactly is it about that 2018 Recreational voter initiative facility licensing/regulatory scheme (MRTMA 2018 ) that has allowed it to cannibalize it's preceding medical licensing/regulatory sibling in recent years? Are there no counteracting incentives to protect our hijacked medicinal cannabis initiative/market and it consumers/patients from this regulatory capture? If not, that should change ...

As I have both predicted and watched this regulatory capture scheme roll out over the past decades as its players work their way up the ladder through this industry, I am not ignorant of the facts and history involved here, yet I honestly cannot answer that question I pose to you here.

Some #s:
The day before we went rec in 2018 there were almost 400,000 registered patients here in Michigan and we have experienced a rapid and notable decline ever since. Michigan would then go from 284,100 patients and 40,200 caregivers in early 2019 to 184,564 patients and 19,916 caregivers by Nov 2022. We lost yet another 15,000 patients and 2,000 Caregivers so far this year to bring us to a historical low of just 101,160 patients and 7,662 caregivers (May 2024).



I assume it now costs more in licensing/regulatory costs to administer this program than the state is taking in? What's the end game here?

What say you Roll It Up?

I have always supported the MMMA farmers market model like the Genesee County Compassion Club & Vehicle City Social clubs in Flint have used for the past 15 years. I'd really hate to see places like that go under and I hope all are doing well.

The way iam seeing it here in maine why buy a card then pay more for untested bud at a dispensary, When there's rec store on every corner an its cheaper an fully tested, med market here has crashed mostly because of greed med went legal here in 99 boy the caregivers had a field day an most slacked off because they were the only legal game in town until 2016 when rec came in. Theres so much used equipment for sale from med grows shutting the doors cant give it away.

@thumper60 Yes, it does seem as though Michigan and Maine have suffered similar fates in Medicinal Cannabis initiatives, market and regulation over the years.

If recreational is going to be the winner, I'd like to see an amendment to allow for a tax exemption to medical card holders purchasing meds there. I am not only talking about the 10% rec excise tax charged here by these retailers, but the 6% general sales tax that medicinal patients should have never faced here as well.

I agree 100% I use to know dozens of people that had a med card when it was 100 bucks a pop now its 20 bucks an nobody bothers. Only reason i see to still hold a card is if a grower it does allow more plant count. The rec market here is booming.

Is Dr. Bob still around these days?

I can only image the medical certification market these days. I know last year I read a report that 2 Docs wrote 23,023 certs alone, with the top 18 Docs accounting for "62% of 134,709 medical marijuana patient certifications cards issued in Michigan between April 1, 2021 and Sept. 29, 2022."

"... A doctor with clinics in Baldwin and Grand Rapids, who certified 21,708 medical marijuana between June 9, 2015 and June 8, 2016, at a pace of nearly 60 patients per day, was reported to the Board of Medicine in 2018 and received a two-year license suspension."
Who was that?

More #s:
"The number of caregivers and patients are amid a sharp decline.

For nearly two years following the December 2019 launch of Michigan’s recreational market, caregivers were allowed to sell their surplus marijuana products to the licensed market. That ended completely on Oct. 1, 2020. At the time, there were 241,221 registered patients and 30,629 caregivers.

Over the last year, the number of certified patients has dipped from 203,405 in August 2022, to 141,005 in July, an average loss of 5,640 patients per month. The number of caregivers declined from 22,867 in August 2022 to 13,244 in July, an average loss of 875 caregivers per month.

Additionally, there are fewer stores selling medical-designated cannabis. The CRA, during the first two years of recreational licensing, required retailers to also obtain medical marijuana licenses, but that condition no longer exists.

Fewer retailers are applying for medical marijuana licenses and a growing number are allowing active medical licenses to expire without renewal.

As of July, there were 296 licensed medical marijuana stores, compared to 704 recreational retailers."

Out of these 7,662 caregivers left in Michigan now (2024), how many are honest and reliable business men/women providing consistent quality meds reliably to patients?

How do our 101,160 patients find/access these decent caregivers safely other than the few farmers markets surviving in the state? With Big Canna giving up on medical for the rec game, I assume this is going to become more of an issue going forward. There is just something really wrong morally and ethically with a state regulatory agency funneling patients into their rec facilities to sin tax them ...

I think the right caregiver is a much better choice if you can not grow your own.
Stores everywhere are selling poison weed.
If it don't have pesticides it has nasty non-cannabis terps sprayed on it.

shaggyballs said:

I think the right caregiver is a much better choice if you can not grow your own.
Stores everywhere are selling poison weed.
If it don't have pesticides it has nasty non-cannabis terps sprayed on it.

Click to expand...

The "right caregiver" is no doubt the way to go, but that market can become sketchy with all of the gray areas. Being a small batch grower the quality should always exceed Big Canna IMHO Especially in flavor/terpenes/cure alone

Anyone have any good/bad stories of dealing with caregivers for meds today or in the past decade and a half?

Speaking of sketchy caregivers, let me share with you a recent personal experience ending just this past weekend.

Back in May I was watching an online "friend"/grower/caregiver that I had known for nearly a decade running a strain I have been considering adding to my medicine cabinet and garden for some time, so I reached out to him on Instagram. I put in a reservation for some flower from the crop at that time before harvest, but we had begun chatting pretty regularly about the strain, growing and life in general during the following weeks.

A couple weeks later I hit him up again on IG to make sure we were still on and to plan a date/time for the over 2 hour round trip up to him. We agreed to meet up days later on Saturday. He told me that he would text me the address that morning for our meeting location.

That Saturday morning to my surprise I did not receive an address, but rather a DM later simply saying he had sold out, I told him I was very disappointed and he offered me some "larf" that he would even finish trimming during the week. I told him I'd pass ...

Days later he begins DMing me again, apologising and offering excuses. He showed me pics of the trimmed larf that he was now calling "smalls" offered at a very reasonable price because he "owed me one". I finally gave in, responded and we agreed to meet up again days later on the next Saturday.

He would then DM me again midweek with the audacity to renegotiate the price upward on the larf/smalls nearly 2x because "I would be killing my pocket". In hindsight I cannot believe that I had agreed to this, but he had agreed to secure the flower for me until our meeting on Saturday.

Saturday morning I did not receive a text or address for our meeting and he has just begun ghosting me on Instagram ...

Is this a common caregiver business practice here today?

What would have you done?

shaggyballs said:

I think the right caregiver is a much better choice if you can not grow your own.
Stores everywhere are selling poison weed.
If it don't have pesticides it has nasty non-cannabis terps sprayed on it.

Click to expand...

Just the opposite here caregivers zero testing, Rec weed tested up the arse You want fake terps go to a dispensary. This is why caregivers here are dropping like flys they cant break into the rec market because the product cant pass state testing

thumper60 said:

Just the opposite here caregivers zero testing, Rec weed tested up the arse You want fake terps go to a dispensary. This is why caregivers here are dropping like flys they cant break into the rec market because the product cant pass state testing

Click to expand...

In general I oppose all regulation due to the systemic corruption of its contemporary political design which always outpaces any harm/threat it claims to protect us from (aka Regulatory Capture). The result is always injurious, the question is just how much real damage will it create while not meeting its stated goal. The Drug War (aka Drug Prohibition 1970) is a perfect example of how this becomes cancerous to our society over time.

Furthermore, I cannot support a later politically created regulatory agency (MMFLA/MRA 2016) forcing its will upon any caregiver or patient as they were specifically designed without such when voted into law in 2008. Michigan in 2024 has many easily accessible quality labs across the state with testing available at reasonable costs. I see no reason why caregivers today would not do testing on their own, if not for research and development, not only their patients safety and security. Patients also have this option when purchasing from sketchy caregiver. Hell I test my home grown! Testing seems more of an integrity issue than regulatory IMHO

Your tax rate in Maine seems odd to me. Medical Marijuana is charged a 5.5% sales tax, but at an 8% rate for prepared food containing medical marijuana. Although your adult-use has a 10% without any such distinction. Why exactly is that?

TheMan13 said:

In general I oppose all regulation due to the systemic corruption of its contemporary political design which always outpaces any harm/threat it claims to protect us from (aka Regulatory Capture). The result is always injurious, the question is just how much real damage will it create while not meeting its stated goal. The Drug War (aka Drug Prohibition 1970) is a perfect example of how this becomes cancerous to our society over time.

Furthermore, I cannot support a later politically created regulatory agency (MMFLA/MRA 2016) forcing its will upon any caregiver or patient as they were specifically designed without such when voted into law in 2008. Michigan in 2024 has many easily accessible quality labs across the state with testing available at reasonable costs. I see no reason why caregivers today would not do testing on their own, if not for research and development, not only their patients safety and security. Patients also have this option when purchasing from sketchy caregiver. Hell I test my home grown! Testing seems more of an integrity issue than regulatory IMHO

Your tax rate in Maine seems odd to me. Medical Marijuana is charged a 5.5% sales tax, but at an 8% rate for prepared food containing medical marijuana. Although your adult-use has a 10% without any such distinction. Why exactly is that?

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Be honest I dont no but have been around marijuana my whole life {65} never bought from any store front. Have seen it all what I state is true in my state. Who wants to buy bud then have to pay to have it tested the Med market here is pretty much untested just a few spot checks here an there an what the state is finding in those spot checks is very disturbing. I have seen to much all caregivers i have ever met are are in for the dollar selling mite infested clones to e-20 sprayed late in flower why not nobody testing.

Tbh no caregiver Inless selling it to clubs is gonnea pay 50+ bucks to have it lab tested, even so that would be every plant and given it’s on;y testing a gram of it’s product. How does that verify or help anyone really ?

also to generalize because someone was screwing u over as a company or deveryone is also insane. Just because someone doesn’t mean everyone akaall caregivers are that way. Find a better source

compassionateExotic said:

Tbh no caregiver Inless selling it to clubs is gonnea pay 50+ bucks to have it lab tested, even so that would be every plant and given it’s on;y testing a gram of it’s product. How does that verify or help anyone really ?

also to generalize because someone was screwing u over as a company or deveryone is also insane. Just because someone doesn’t mean everyone akaall caregivers are that way. Find a better source

Click to expand...

Call me crazy but the taxes on recreational should cover licensed caregiver testing imo. So the smaller homegrowers under x patients should have subsidized testing. Or course a lot more would have to enter into it. But I would think medical sales should be supervised and at least partially subsidized and if your plants fail testing you are removed from the medical growers list. Something like that. But this is early years for this. As time goes on it will evolve.

The CRA does plan to have their own laboratory operational by January next year.

I wonder about many of those sketchy "licensed" labs that you have never heard of, or cannot even Google, that pop up on all these retail packaged products flying out the door. I assume there will be some change, if not enlightenment into that very technical market in 2025.

Speaking of the retail lab reports referenced on products today, I would like to see terpene disclosure becoming a requirement as well. At least the terpene percentage like THC, as that can tell you a lot about the product within as well.

It definitely helps me to get past the heartburn of an occasional stop into a BigCanna establishment, like I do Lume to grab some of their Jenny Kush (Rare Dankness Genetics) as terp % is voluntarily on their packaging, but oddly not on their website. The terp numbers are often sad, but the lower that %, I know the lower the quality inside, regardless of the THC % IMHO. I'd take a THC hit for an increased terpene % any day. Lume uses well known labs with websites and other social media to boot.

Remediation in general, and the unlimited amount of failures a product is allowed to be retested before it "passes" is a discussion for another day ...

MLive visits Iron Labs in Walled Lake and Steep Hill in Ann Arbor to get the big picture on the process that these closely-tracked samples undergo to gain approval.