The city of Detroit will open limited license applications for adult-use marijuana retailers, microbusinesses and consumption lounges next month.
From Aug. 1-31, Detroit businesses can submit applications online to get licensed.
Overall, the city will grant up to a total of 100 cannabis retailer licenses, 30 microbusiness licenses and 30 consumption lounge licenses over the course of three phases.
The city’s Adult-Use Marijuana Ordinance, sponsored by City Council President Pro Tempore James Tate, was approved on April 5 in an 8-1 vote. It went into effect on April 20 and unlimited license applications were made available, which includes for marijuana growers, processors, secured transporters, safety compliance facilities, marijuana event organizers and temporary marijuana events.
Detroit has long allowed medical marijuana businesses but was slow to adopt an ordinance for recreational-use businesses after Michigan voters approved adult use in 2018.
The Michigan marijuana industry is estimated to generate approximately $3 billion annually in sales.
“I want thank my colleagues for allowing this next critical step in the licensing process despite the frivolous lawsuits and ongoing attempts to get Detroit’s ordinance tossed,” Tate said in a news release. “For years Detroiters have been fighting for an opportunity to compete in the state’s ever-growing market and the time has finally come to reap the benefits of their hard work.”
The city’s new set of rules for licensing adult-use cannabis businesses widens the previously established Legacy Detroiter program, calling those applicants “equity” applicants instead, and putting them on a separate track so they’re not competing with “nonequity” applicants. Equity applicants in Detroit would follow the state’s social equity program as described in its adult-use cannabis law, instead of the rules Detroit came up with. The special designation for equity retailers in Detroit was included after the city witnessed Black entrepreneurs and Detroiters made up a small portion of the local medical marijuana industry, Tate said.
The first wave of limited licenses is expected to be awarded in October, and they are valid for one year.
“You have individuals who have lost everything from the same plant that others are making profit off of,” Tate said. “We look at this as an opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past.”
In the first phase of limited licensing, the city will grant up to 60 licenses, broken down as follows:
- 20 social equity retailers
- 20 general retailers
- five micro-business equity
- five micro-business general
- five consumption lounge equity
- five consumption lounge general
After the phase one application window closes, licenses will be granted in order of applicant scores. An independent, third-party entity will review applications. Tiebreaker lotteries will be used for applicants who received the same score and earned a minimum of 100 points of the general scoring criteria and at least five points of the social equity scoring criteria.
Licensing applications will be available on the Office of Marijuana Ventures and Entrepreneurship’s website starting noon Aug. 1.
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