Scott Greenlee heads Healthy and Productive Michigan, a group of citizens trying to prevent the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state before it becomes “Big Tobacco 2.0.”
“From a strategy standpoint, it is going to be a lot of education. We are going to really point out some of the myths that are going on with regard to the state of Colorado, and other states that have legalized it, and we want to prevent our great state from going through that.”
From the economic point of view, Greenlee says legalizing marijuana will ultimately become an expense to the state.
“What they are not accounting for, of course, is increase of enforcement, increase cost of enforcing the regulations on not only the law enforcement that you think about but just the policies and procedures and checks that have to go into place.”
If recreational marijuana is legalized, Greenlee says, businesses will experience challenges in hiring employees.
“Those, ‘who can I hire challenges,’ are going to really multiply and it is going to be a problem. Marijuana, of course, stays in your system for up to 30 days. It is not like somebody who goes out, has a couple of beers with a friend, and then the next day it is out of their system.”
With less than 55 days until the November election, Michigan voters have less than two months to make up their minds about the legalization of recreational marijuana.
Michelle Jokisch Polo, WGVU News.
*Mariano Avila contributed to this story.
