September 8, 2025
MIRS News

Cannabis Regulatory Agency Director Brian HANNA spoke before the House and at the
quarterly meeting where he pointed out four challenges: Black-market activity,
enforcement obstacles, hemp-derived product flood, and unreliable testing.
Of the four items, Hanna said the one closest to being dealt with was the fraudulent
testing results. The state cannabis reference lab had competed construction and the
equipment moved in, but they were looking for passage of HB 4501to allow possession
of marijuana for testing purposes.
“We’re hoping to get this lab up and ready, 100 percent ready to go, June next year,”
Hanna said.
He said until the lab opens, any enforcement testing they need to do needs to be done
through competing labs, and it made it harder to go after labs that were pushing
doctored or fraudulent results.
He pointed to the four-year court battle against Viridis that ended with the laboratories in
Lansing and Bay City locations having their licenses revoked, having to shut down by
Sept. 30, and the three owners being permanently banned from the Michigan marijuana
industry.
During the CRA meeting, Hanna said there are transnational criminal elements
operating outside of the regulations to grow as much cannabis as possible and ship it to
where they are able to make the most money.

“Whether it’s 500 plants or 50,000, the only potential ramification, legally, is a $500 fine,
and there are groups that have taken advantage of that throughout the United States,”
he said.
To punctuate Hanna’s point, Attorney General Dana NESSEL announced that a
55-year-old Traverse City man was arraigned in Lansing and charged with two counts of
filing false income tax returns after he was found with 134 plants, 230 pounds of
processed cannabis, more than $100,000 in cash, and six Rolex watches.
“When Michiganders voted to legalize marijuana, they did so with the expectation that
sales would be taxed and the revenue would go toward benefiting our communities,”
Nessel said.
Hanna said there were obstacles to the enforcement of cannabis rules, but he was
hoping to have some of those obstacles fixed under the new rule set that needed to be
approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR), which has not held a
quorum for four sessions.
“I’m not a big fan of saying what our weakness is, but I’m being transparent. This is a
fact. It’s very hard for us to suspend licenses for egregious conduct,” he said.
He said that due process was important, but there were companies breaking the rules
that just shut their licenses down to avoid any penalties before going through the
process itself.

“We agree with due process. We also should have the ability to suspend for egregious
conduct, juxtaposed with the health and safety for the consumers and employees,” he
said.
The last challenge Hanna talked about for the industry during the meeting was the
unregulated hemp-derived products that used a loophole from the federal 2018 Farm
Bill to flood the market with synthetic THC products, often sold outside of the
dispensaries (See “Independent Audit Sees Synthetics In Cannabis,” 5/1/25).

“Nobody wants to see kids that shouldn’t have access to these products get access to
these products. We all agree with that. The solution? Now is the time to talk to
lawmakers,” he said. (see related story).
He said there were THC edibles found in a liquor store that had three times the amount
of THC as allowed in the regulated market.
Hanna also talked a bit about the market and said that adult recreational cannabis made
up 99.8 percent of all cannabis sales in the state.

He said the supply of product was continuing to increase, and the prices were
continuing to fall, further depressing the amount of money being made by growers.
“As a reminder, the state CRA, our agency, cannot limit the number of licenses that we
issue,” he said.
He said the gatekeepers are the municipalities and if the industry wanted a moratorium
it needed to be done through the legislature.
He said the number of growers continued to increase, but the number of processors and
retailers had stayed static for many years and pointed to the synthetics being brought
into the market from “who knows where.”
He said Michigan hit a record with more than 39,000 employees registered in the
statewide monitoring system for the cannabis industry, but the crashing prices were
threatening that emerging state job market.
“We know that there are hardworking people in the state – Michiganders – that are
working in this industry and we’re all trying to work together to figure out how to move
this industry ahead to where it needs to be,” Hanna said.