News, Culture and NPR for Central & Northern Michigan
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
91.7FM Alpena and WCML-TV Channel 6 Alpena are off the air. Click here to learn more.

$6,000 price tag for medical marijuana application

Flickr User Neeta Lind
/
https://flic.kr/p/64VQXv

The state announced the price tag Friday for applications to grow, sell or transport medical marijuana. The application fee will be 6-thousand dollars. It’s a one-time, non-refundable fee. That’s on top of up to 5-thousand dollars that municipalities can charge for an application.

The fee is meant to cover the costs of a background investigation and processing the application.

Andrew Brisbo  is with the state Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. He says the background investigation is very in-depth – which is why it costs so much.

“Their financial position, their history of compliance with regulatory agencies, their criminal background, all of those facets are factored into the determination on issuing licenses.”

“We really attempted in doing the math here to figure out exactly what our costs were going to be and just collect enough money to offset those costs.”

The application process officially opens on December 15th.