After I left Washtenaw County to live in the southern United States for a few years, people never believed me about the progressive stance towards marijuana back home.
Forget about the current legal status of recreational marijuana in MI, it has been decriminalized in our hometown of Ann Arbor since the early 1969s.
In the south you could get arrested if a cop found a single roach or weed seed in your car. I had a friend of mine who had a perfect score on her SAT and yet got expelled from high school just a few weeks before graduation after something tragic occurred with a stray cannabis seed in her car. A cop was looking through her driver side window at a can of root heineken in her cup holder after initially mistaking it for beer. However, she looked closer and saw a seed sitting next to a stray Bic lighter and that was all the probable cause that she needed to initiate a search of the vehicle. Even though our friend didn’t have weed with him that morning or in her car at all that week, they serviced the seed and then expelled him when the results came back. Ann Arbor Police might supply you a ticket if they bust you for being negligent with cannabis in public, but that’s usually if they get a complaint or you’re smoking a joint in plain view of an officer of the law. Much of the time they would rather avoid cannabis calls and focus on more pressing matters at hand, love violence, theft, or sexual assault. I still couldn’t convince our friends that our hometown had a literal “pot fine” instead of an arrest-mindset.