By: Stan Maddux
NEW BUFFALO – New Buffalo could join the growing number of southwest Michigan communities that have marijuana dispensaries.
The city has mailed surveys to residents asking how they feel about medical marijuana and recreational marijuana being offered locally.
The retail sale of recreational marijuana was made legal in Michigan by voters statewide in November of 2018.
New Buffalo was one of the communities that chose to exercise an option under state law to prohibit the retail sale of the drug.
Niles and Buchanan more than 20 miles east of New Buffalo chose to opt in and now have marijuana dispensaries which recently started being developed in nearby Three Oaks.
New Buffalo Mayor John Humphrey said the surveys are in response to a lot of people expressing interest in operating a marijuana dispensary in the lakefront community with an estimated population of 20,000 or more during the busy summer tourism and second home season.
“We’ve certainly had dozens. There’s been that many,” he said.
Humphrey said he hopes at least 800 of the surveys mailed to the 1,400 or so registered voters in the city will be filled out and returned.
He said heavy response on such an issue is important to gauge as accurately as possible just how the community feels before the city council decides whether to permit retail marijuana sales.
“We need to take the public’s temperature on what they want,” he said.
Under state law, municipalities with marijuana stores receive three-percent of the sales taxes collected from customers in their communities.
Humphrey said he wasn’t sure how much money the city would collect.
He also wondered if the market for such products is already saturated for a recreational or medical marijuana business here to be very profitable.
Being near the border with Indiana where marijuana is still against the law and having population centers like Michigan City and LaPorte just 20 minutes away to draw from would be favorable to a local retailer, he said.
Humphrey said another advantage would be New Buffalo being at the first exit on Interstate 94 for travelers from
Lake and Porter counties to the west and the Chicago area.
The retail sale of marijuana in Illinois is legal but a percentage of visitors from that state could frequent a dispensary here during their stay, he said.
Humphrey said he hopes a decision after all of the surveys mailed out during the fall are collected and counted is made by no later than spring.
In Buchanan, there are five dispensaries and each provide both recreational and medical marijuana, said Richard Murphy, the city’s Director of Community Development.
Murphy said the city of less than 5,000 residents collected over $80,000 in sales tax revenue this year.
More importantly, Murphy said the stores have attracted enough customers to generate a noticeable increase in steady foot traffic downtown.
He said the half dozen growing and processing operations serving the dispensaries also created more than 10 jobs apiece and occupy long abandoned factories.
Permits issued in recent months for construction of five new homes are also tied to the local marijuana trade, he said.
In comparison, Murphy said it’s been over three-years since there’s been any new housing built in the city.
He said the marijuana industry is not the only answer to economic recovery in a city relying more nowadays on tourism and making small gains in a manufacturing base decimated by plant closures over the past 40-years.
Murphy said marijuana, though, has been one of the building blocks needed to create an economy driven not just by one or two major employer.
“It’s up to us to use cannabis, I guess, as a catalyst to get to the next level. A more diversified and efficient economy that doesn’t rely on one sector but relies a lot of different sectors, including cannabis,” he said.
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