HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 99th Legislature

Governor Rick Snyder P.O. Box 30013 Lansing, Michigan 48909

Shelly Edgerton Director, Licensing and Regulatory Affairs 611 W. Ottawa P.O. Box 30004 Lansing, MI 48909

Dear Governor Snyder and Director Edgerton,

On behalf of our constituents, we urgently ask you to ensure that Michiganders continue to have access to reliable sources of medical marijuana. The department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs is still processing a significant backlog of applications for many marijuana businesses that applied over five months ago. Considering that the July licensing board meeting was canceled and that the board is expected to review only 20-30 applications per month, it is impossible to license enough marijuana facilities including transporters, processors, and safety compliance facilities to service Michigan’s approximately 270,000 patients by the September 15, 2018 deadline.

To their credit, LARA has twice acted to protect the public interest by preventing disruptive closures of pending applicants’ businesses. However, we are very concerned that the current pace of application processing will not be fast enough to meet the September 15th deadline for all applicants who applied prior to February 15th. Application processing has been further delayed by additional inquiries to applicants who have already submitted their application materials. The processing delays threaten businesses with arbitrary closure, and their customers are once again unsure if they will be able to get the medicines they need. It is not acceptable to allow a bureaucratic delay to bankrupt law-abiding small businesses, to destroy jobs, and to deny epileptic children and disabled veterans access to the medicines they need. You have the power to prevent this by either extending the deadline for continued operations or by devoting sufficient administrative resources to enable timely processing of licensure applications.

Please act promptly to protect the people of our state.

Sincerely,

Sen. David Knezek, Rep. , Rep. Frank Liberati, 5th District 11th District 13th District

Rep. Robert Wittenberg, Rep. Patrick Green, Rep. Martin Howrylak, 27th District 28th District 41st District

Rep. , Rep. Adam Zemke, Rep. Tom Cochran, 53rd District 55th District 67th District

David LaGrand Rep. David LaGrand, 75th District

CC: Andrew Brisbo