Criminal expungements may be key to boosting minority participation in Michigan’s fledgling marijuana industry

There’s a lot of hope riding on a proposed marijuana micro-business license for people like Sammie Rogers.

Rogers, 30 of Pontiac, wants to open the state’s first for-profit marijuana school in one of Pontiac’s designated medical marijuana zones to produce licensed workers to fill the growing employment gap in the marijuana industry.

He’s hopeful that, through the new license, the school will help create a new tide of entrepreneurs who may not have the opportunity to start their own marijuana business otherwise.

But the state regulations for a micro-business license haven’t been released yet. Perhaps more significant is that Michigan’s recreational marijuana law didn’t include provisions for expunging prior marijuana convictions, leaving those with a criminal record barred from working in the new marijuana industry – a circumstance that affects more minorities.

“My number one goal is to provide low-income, inner city individuals with an opportunity to work in this industry because if we’re going to be honest, the way it’s written is for millionaires. The people who are applying for these businesses licenses are not people of color,” Rogers said.

Across the state, there’s about 50,000 people who have been previously convicted of a marijuana-related crime, according to Michigan Radio.

But blacks are 3.73-times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, according to a nationwide 2010 report released by the American Civil Liberties Union. In the Midwest, that rate jumps to four-times more likely — despite data that shows recreational usage is similar across both whites and non-whites. The same study also showed that the amount of marijuana arrests only increased in the early 2000s.

Without an expungement law and decriminalization on the books, those with marijuana-related felonies could be left out of the marijuana industry’s potential economic boom, unable to work in or own a marijuana business because of their criminal convictions.

Advocates of the industry claim decriminalization and expungement go far beyond economics — many believe it’s an issue of social justice that’s gone unaddressed for far too long.

“It’s absolutely necessary that we move forward with expungement,” said Margeaux Bruner, political director for the Michigan Cannabis Industry Association which represents future and existing licensees and ancillary businesses, and the liaison with multiple levels of government.

Bruner also worked on the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol and is a member of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Marijuana Legal Workgroup.

“It wasn’t included in the ballot initiative because legally it couldn’t be – you can’t change two laws in one initiative,” Bruner said.

“Now, there’s no tax revenue allocated to serve economically disadvantaged communities which is something we do see in other states. Places like Massachusetts and Illinois have programs and have earmarked funds for expungement services, workforce development and re-entry services.”

While Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has stated she planned to create a system to quickly expunge marijuana-related criminal records following legalization, little has happened on that front. Individuals must currently apply on their own. Part of the issue is that Michigan has never completed a study of who has been arrested for those crimes, where they come from, and where the arrests took place.

“Even though we know this is happening, there isn’t a study or report with finite detail that explicitly states people of color are being disproportionately affected … I can’t even say people of color. I could say communities were affected, but what is a community?” Bruner said. “We don’t even have those definitions here.”

If an expungement program was to take place under the current laws, it would have to be paid for out of the general fund. Expungement programs can be time consuming and expensive, but new software such as Clear My Record, used by the state of California, have digitized and cheapened the process.

In an effort to change Michigan expungement laws, state Sen. Jeff Irwin, an Ann Arbor Democrat, announced last Tuesday he had introduced legislation to expunge the records of an estimated 235,000 people convicted of possession or use of marijuana. Irwin’s legislation also directs courts to grant expungements for people who were caught with amounts of marijuana that are now legally allowed.

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs will soon be releasing a new micro-business license, that’s meant to help level the playing field for social and economic equity in the industry, Bruner said.

“They haven’t announced the language or the cost but it should have a much lower barrier to entry. It’s ideally being created for a craft, cottage-type industry for people to run their own small business,” Bruner said.

Most recently on July 18 the state’s Marijuana Regulatory Agency announced details of its “social equity” program, per a requirement in the recreational marijuana legalization law approved last year, according to the AP. Nineteen cities across the state will be eligible, including Pontiac. People who qualify will see a reduction of up to 60% on their application fee, initial license fee and future renewal fees. Regulators plan to visit the 19 cities multiple times before applications are accepted starting Nov. 1.

Higher Learning for Higher Employment

Rogers was born and raised in Pontiac before moving to California at the age of 16. By 2010 he had found and fell in love with a strain of marijuana called Trainwreck, not as a smoker, but as a grandson who saw how medical cannabis relieved the pain of his grandmother dying from brain cancer.

On the other side of the spectrum, in the early 2000s a close friend of Rogers’ died after accidentally smoking marijuana laced with PCP.

Both experiences led him to work in all aspects of the marijuana industry for the past decade with a focus on safety and reliability in the product and a passion for getting people back to employment.

In 2013, he came back to his hometown — the same hometown that last summer, passed a ballot initiative to allow 20 medical dispensaries — in hopes of teaching others how to grow, cultivate and sell clean, organic marijuana and products.

Should his application be approved, Rogers plans to invest $380,000 into building Higher Learning Institutions in one of Pontiac’s designated marijuana districts.

Rogers is writing the curriculum in partnership with the University of Michigan’s Green Wolverine program inside its business school. Any marijuana produced at the facility through the courses will be donated to local research agencies.

The school would include multi-week courses such as a provisioning center course to train workers for retail and patient care in a dispensary, a cultivation course, a growing course with three different techniques, and an extraction course to teach individuals how to make THC or CBD oils and products. Prices will range from $299 to $1,199, depending on the course.

“This will lead to more opportunities for high paying jobs and with the new micro-business license, we’ll be looking to help our students who want to run their own show come up with the funding and way to do that,” Rogers said.

With plans to apply for a license to operate in Pontiac and close on a building this summer, Rogers hopes to open the school by this fall.

“We’re all hoping Gov. Whitmer goes forward with expungements. We’ve seen the black man in particular sent to prison for ridiculous amounts of time for a plant, not a drug, a plant that was labeled a drug,” Rogers said.

There’s also plans to work through the school to take up individual expungement cases in Pontiac.

Growing up with Rogers, his cousin, Chris Jackson, had a front-row seat to learning about the marijuana industry. Jackson is currently a part-owner of an operating provisioning center in Ypsilanti called Sticky Ypsi and a community activist in Pontiac. He and his partners plan to apply to open another dispensary in Pontiac this fall.

“We have an opportunity right now in Michigan for some real criminal justice reform and that is not always the case throughout history,” Jackson said.

“Sometimes there are ripples between laws and industry, but this is a binary one-to-one that we’re seeing in our lifetime. Expungement isn’t enough. We need decriminalization because if we continue to enforce a law that still statistically targets minorities for possession or consumption, you have a perpetual system of those who need expungements.”

For now, business owners, potential entrepreneurs, employees and those hoping for a mass expungement program will have to wait to see how the jigsaw puzzle of Michigan’s marijuana industry shapes up. It’s an incredible amount of fast moving pieces, Bruner said from Lansing, that makes the process of creating social equity so difficult.

“The fact that this information alone is so hard to find is almost criminal and above all else, it does prevent people from participating in this industry. There’s too many stuck in this information blackout,” Bruner said.

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