These former Michigan cops used to help prosecute drug crimes. Now they're testing legal weed.

(Detroit Metro Times) Together, Todd Welch, Greg Michaud, and Dr. Michele Glinn say they have a combined 85 years of experience in testing drugs, much of it through their careers with Michigan State Police; in the forensic science division for Welch and Michaud, and in toxicology for Glinn.

In the early 2000s, MSP's forensic laboratory in East Lansing was one of the largest publicly funded crime lab systems in the nation. But Glinn left in 2011, when recession-triggered austerity measures forced her and her husband, who worked for the U.S. Postal Service, to take furloughs. Michaud retired as the director of forensics in 2016, around the time Welch knew he was planning on retiring in 2018.

"It was my wife," Welch says. "She kept saying, 'What are you going to do in retirement?'" At the same time, one of his dad's friends had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and his dad asked him what kind of testing requirements there were for medicinal marijuana.

Back then, there were none.

In 2016, then-Governor Rick Snyder finally approved legislation to regulate Michigan's medical cannabis industry — eight years after Michigan voters approved cannabis for medicinal purposes. ("I just think it was something that was so much more bigger than what the state government and the legislature thought it was going to be," Michaud says of the delay.) ...............(more)

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