Manufacturing a controlled substance (marijuana); MCL 333.7401(2)(d)(iii); “Manufacture”; MCL 333.7106(3)(a); “Marijuana”; MCL 333.7106(4); The personal-use exemption; People v. Baham; People v. Hunter; “Preparation” & “compounding”; Stone v. State (AR); Thompson v. Western States Med. Ctr.; Constitutionality of the statues at issue; Vagueness; People v. Newton; People v. Sands; Fair or proper notice; People v. Dillon

The court held that the circuit court did not err by denying defendant’s motions to dismiss the charge against him, and that the affirmative defense of personal-use was unavailable to him. It also held that the statutes involved were not unconstitutionally vague. The district court bound him over for trial on one count of manufacturing a controlled substance (marijuana) after an explosion leveled his garage. The circuit court denied his motions to dismiss the charge, or in the alternative to raise a personal-use affirmative defense at trial. On appeal, the court rejected his argument that the charge was legally unsupportable and must be dismissed. It noted that even a cursory review of his expert’s (G) testimony “supports that a jury could conclude that open blasting to distill concentrated THC from raw plant material involves a ‘significantly higher degree of activity’ than rolling a marijuana cigarette or baking brownies.” G explained that “butane is used to dissolve the plant material to extract the plant’s resin. Once the butane evaporates away from the resin, the maker adds ethanol to cool the resin, causing the fat molecules to congeal so they can be separated out. The remaining resin must be heated to convert THCA to THC, leaving the manufacturer with a concentrated, pure product.” The evidence precluded dismissal of the charge. The court also rejected his claim that the statutes involved are unconstitutionally vague. It found the definition of “marijuana” put him “on clear notice that the plant material he possessed and the resin he extracted were ‘marijuana,’ as was the THCA and THC” he tried to derive from the resin. Moreover, the statute “comprehensively defines ‘manufacture.’” Finally, the court rejected his contention that, absent dismissal of the charge, he was nevertheless entitled to raise an affirmative defense under the personal-use exception. “The ‘open blasting’ process of transforming raw marijuana into useable resin involves more than just ‘preparing’ the marijuana for personal use.” While defendant was “correct that in one sense he was engaged in ‘preparing’ the marijuana for his own use, he was doing so by processing it in several different ways to arrive at an end product.” It noted that, were it to hold that his “manufacturing activity was merely ‘preparation’ because that word, too, fits his actions, the ‘preparation’ aspect of the personal-use exception would swallow the prohibited conduct described in the rule.” Affirmed.