So much for that growth industry.  Here was a segment of the business sector that was adding jobs, expanding at a pretty good clip and it was actually growing and there-in was the problem.

   You see these entrepreneurs were growing marijuana, Mary Jane, weed, call it what you will but the state appeals court slammed the door on these dispensaries and the cops have been joyfully shutting them down one by one ever since.  That's because when voters approved the medical marijuana law, apparently pot shops were not part of the plan.

   A three judge panel ruled that sick folks have the right to smoke this stuff; they just can't hobble down the street to the nearest head shop and buy it.

   And that loud applause you heard was from the law enforcement community which didn't much care for this law in the first place.

   One local senator notes 48 such stores in Lansing.  He is a conservative Republican and while Sen. Rick Jones would normally embrace that kind of free-market competition, he is not a believer when it comes to this product. He believes no market is better than too many markets. 

    Of course the big boogeyman man in all this is the underlying fear that these shops foster crime. Many of them were in neighborhoods where kids could see the coming and going and pretty soon they'd be pot heads..at least that's how the conservative reasoning goes.

    But not to worry, the appeals court has halted all this and the truly needy will simply have to grow their own at home. But they better keep the plants under lock and key or the cops could raid their homes and arrest them for not doing that, too.

    Guess the governor will have to look elsewhere to help lower the jobless rate around here.