East Lansing to discuss recreational marijuana

The city of East Lansing is trying to come up with a clear way of handling penalties when it comes to recreational marijuana. The issue is a point of contention between city council members as they have not yet been able to agree on how to handle the use and possession of marijuana.

Right now existing regulations consider all recreational marijuana use to be illegal. But in the November 2018 elections, Michigan voted to legalize recreational marijuana.

Since then, East Lansing has been working on setting up groundwork for the change.

The city council began discussing the issue in March. The main issue dividing city council members is whether to have marijuana possession be a civil infraction for all violations of the law or have certain misdemeanors.

Council members couldn’t agree on certain aspects of a potential ordinance, like a section of it that bans smoking marijuana while sitting in the passenger area of a vehicle, whether it’s parked or in motion.

East Lansing Mayor Mark Meadows suggested the section be made more clear.

Council members are set to have a meeting on the ordinance at 7:00 p.m. April 23.

WILX News 10 will be tracking this story.