This article was originally published on the Marijuana Patients Organization site on April 20, 2011.
A seminar today on how medical-marijuana patients and their drug providers can stay within state law was cancelled after the lawyer scheduled to speak said Highland Township threatened her with a land-use violation.
“I’ve never heard of not being able to hold a seminar on private property,” Howell attorney Denise Pollicella said. The seminar was to be at a Hydrovision store, part of a chain of horticultural supply houses that sell mainly to Michiganders who grow medical marijuana indoors, Pollicella said.
“The police are allowed to enforce zoning violations, so it was Hydrovision’s decision not to put their customers through a potential police action,” she said.
Highland Township Clerk Mary McDonnell said the township acted under a unanimous board vote in March to extend its moratorium that bans “facilities or activities related to the growth sales or dispensation of marijuana,” according to the resolution wording.
“We’re just applying what our ordinances call for,” McDonnell said, adding: “We’re waiting for the state to sort out” how the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act applies to townships.