Some Lansing residents are taking the regulation of marijuana businesses into their own hands by signing a petition aims to do just that.
The group Lansing Loves Safe Jobs filed a petition Tuesday that tackles the problem of how to regulate these businesses in the city.
Jeffery Hank, the group’s chairman, said the petition acknowledges the big issues surrounding the topic.
“What people are concerned about is keeping them out of the neighborhoods and keeping away from schools. So our proposal bans marijuana businesses in neighborhoods and prohibits marijuana businesses or marijuana advertising 1,000 feet from schools.”
Other than those restrictions, the proposal says marijuana businesses should be treated the same as any other licensed businesses in Lansing.
“If we want the tax revenue to put into schools roads bridges and that kind of stuff we have to have a local ordinance in place,” Hank said.
Members of the group say city council has taken too long to get something passed.
“There’s people literally waiting to invest millions of dollars in this community,” Hank said. “So, why is the council waiting, sitting and screwing around? We gotta get down to business.”
“The Lansing City Council and the public have worked relentlessly on crafting a Medical Marihuana Ordinance. We have been driven by the opinions of neighborhoods, the Lansing Chamber of Commerce, and businesses that there is a saturation of dispensaries in our community. During our process we had heard from time to time that different groups were looking at submitting a petition driven ordinance. The biggest difference between what the City Council has been working and Lansing Loves Safe Jobs is the City decrease the number of dispensaries and Lansing Loves grandfathers in the current dispensaries. That means we could have over seventy dispensaries in Lansing. Communities around us have none. It surprises me that Jeff Hanks is not submitting an ordinance in East Lansing where he lives, instead wants Lansing besieged in the Medical Marihuana business.”
Now that the petition has been filed, the city clerk has 15 days to validate the signatures. If the signatures are all accepted, city council then has 30 days to adopt the petition ordinance. If it doesn’t, it will be up to voters to decide.
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