For years Michigan has been butting heads with pro marijuana initiatives and it seems as though opposing Michigan officials are doing anything in order to make the lives of pot smokers just a little bit more inconvenient. On June 12, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs came out with a list of terms that marijuana dispensaries are no longer allowed to use, including dispensaries.
LARA came up with not 1, not 5, but 16 terms that medical marijuana businesses are prohibited to use in their business name and in their advertising such as: drug store, apothecary, medicine store, doctor of pharmacy and licensed pharmacy technician. Michigan is giving these business owners no leeway in what to call their business and how to go about marketing to their customers. LARA did, however, say that dispensaries will be allowed to be called “provisioning centers” which LARA claims will help with keeping up on Michigan’s health code.
Michigan’s reason for the list has absolutely nothing to do with how dispensaries use these terms, but rather the rules in the Michigan public Health code. Part 177 of the MPHC state that only people who have met certain qualifications can use the terms that are provided in the newly developed list. Many people who work in dispensaries, well, provisioning centers such as budtenders are very unlikely to meet these specific qualifications.
If dispensaries keep advertising themselves as dispensaries, then they are facing closure due to failing to comply with a state mandate, thus putting countless businesses in a tight spot because there are only so many names that businesses can call themselves before everything starts blurring together. All this does is inconvenience businesses, confuse customers, and make dispensaries scared about business closure over a name issue that is perfectly harmless.