Overgrown: Southwest Michigan’s Booming Cannabis Industry
BERRIEN COUNTY, Mich. -- The cannabis industry is budding all over the U.S, and Michigan is cashing in.
More and more legal pot shops are opening; prices are the lowest they've ever been and some in the weed business fear there are signs of a bubble ready to burst.
Benton Harbor is one city looking to make an economic rebound, and opportunity came knocking in 2019, as Michigan joined several other states legalizing recreational marijuana. The city's Main Street now boasts four such dispensaries, but how many pot shops can one town have?
Some worry the industry is overgrown and unsustainable.
Cross the border from Indiana and you'll be hard-pressed not to see billboards and dispensaries everywhere.
Even so, it's hard to forget the Mitten State wasn't so friendly to marijuana.
Not even fifteen years ago, selling cannabis was a serious crime in New Buffalo Township.
In 2012, one adult and two teens were arrested for having $500 worth of pot.
In 2018, if you possessed any amount of weed, you could be jailed up to one year and face a $2,000 fine.
But now, cannabis isn't a crime in New Buffalo Township, it's the biggest game in town!
"Because it's just so much, it's so many... And you can flip flop here and there and say 'I'll try this next time,'" one customer says.
Another says "They're just giving it out is what it feels like.
April 20th, otherwise known as 4/20, is the year's biggest retail holiday for cannabis users.
Dispensaries slash their prices, and in New Buffalo, it's a free-for-all of deals and steals.
Bloomery Cannabis is one of the many dispensaries in New Buffalo Township, and it seems rather calm on an ordinary weekday.
But on 4/20, there's a line stretching out the door.
In New Buffalo, the market has surged to meet this kind of demand.
Back in 2023, there was only one dispensary, Rolling Embers, in the area of Four Winds Casino. Now, there's at least five others, Jars Cannabis, Urb Cannabis, King of Budz and Border Budz, plus the House of Dank, which is still being built, all in one small part of the township.
With a dozen dispensaries in a town only a mile from the Indiana border, thousands come from out of state.
"There's lots of good stuff compared back to Illinois where I'm from," said one man.
Another admitted he was coming up from Indiana, near Lafayette.
One woman also admitted she was from the Hoosier state.
Another man said he drove four hours to get there. "It's worth it," he added.
"In Illinois, you can't hardly buy it because they tax like thirty-five percent on each dollar in Illinois," one man complained about his home state. "You can't really afford it in Illinois."
Despite some lines going completely around some of the dispensaries that day, that much action might not even put them in the black.
There's an intense line here and you have [a plane] flying overhead that says 'half-off here on 4/20.' Are you gonna turn a profit today? I asked one manager.
“Absolutely," said Kevin Brojek, the general manager at King of Budz, who added "At the end of the day it’s not about the money."
Teddy Attallah, the GM at Urb Cannabis New Buffalo, said "4/20 Holiday is not for us. It’s for the consumers. We give stuff away for free, pretty much. Our whole store is almost fifty-percent off. There’s not fifty-percent margins in this industry. Some people think we make pure profit. It’s not.”
But all days must end, even 4/20.
Needless to say, Michigan's seeing green, in more ways than one.
The state has over 660 recreational shops, on top of around 330 medical dispensaries, according to michigancannabis.org, each bringing in roughly $15,000 in licensing renewal fees, plus the taxes dispersed by the state to the municipalities they set up in.
That means recreational ships alone bring in nearly $10 million to the state.
In a city like Niles, five dispensaries bring in over $407,000.
Ryan Boeskool, the Executive Director of the Greater Niles Chamber of Commerce says "That money goes into the general fund. It goes to parks, it goes to community development," adding "Certainly a number of projects probably have been funded that ordinarily would not have."
Obviously this money does make a difference, doesn't it? I ask.
He says “Absolutely."
In Buchanan, their six dispensaries brought in nearly $350,000
In Benton Harbor, four dispensaries raked in nearly $233,000.
And New Buffalo Township, per the latest data from the state, which shows only six pot shops, it's also nearly $350,000.
That's just in our area.
Cities like Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Lansing see millions from dispensaries.
And that's just from licensing fees, not including the state's excise tax, which rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars in cannabis sales.
These are high highs, but, as every real cannabis connoisseur knows, there's always a come down.
Lowell, Michigan once had nine dispensaries: now they're down to four.
In Muskegon, one of their three dispensaries shuttered seemingly overnight.
For those first dispensary owners opening up shop just a few years ago, they likened it to being the first folks to dip their pans during the gold rush. But now, years later, some fear these boom towns could turn to ghost towns.
James Borton and Neil Clementson have been growing cannabis on their forty-acre property of Adams Family Farm in Hastings, Michigan, for five years now.
They say, you may be right to feel paranoid about the market.
“I’d say it’s been kind of a steady downslope right now because the prices are compressing heavily and we’re seeing a glut in the market of inventory," said James.
What’s causing that glut in the market? I ask.
“The insane amount of licenses out there," he said. "A lot of companies out there building. Farms putting up stuff like crazy, doing their thing. Doing their investments, hitting the market with product. There’s a lot of demand in Michigan for the product, and there’s a lot of people willing to grow it.”
Adams Family Farm supplies dispensaries all over Michigan, including Benton Harbor and New Buffalo.
“I don’t know this by any means, but I’d be willing to bet that forty percent of the revenue for the state is coming from those locations," said Neil.
Really. What makes you make that guess? I ask.
“Just for the overall sales volume on what we’re selling to those shops in comparison to other shops. Their orders are three times, four times the size of a standard shop," he said.
James agrees.
Neil is the farm's grower, and he has decades of experience. He was even out west in Colorado when cannabis was first legalizing over ten years ago.
He saw firsthand when they had a bubble in their market.
That bubble burst, and several shops folded.
“From what I’ve seen, right, they hand out excessive amounts of licenses, the licenses go to a point that if the bubble bursts, it comes back down and then prices will go back up until they figure out what the magic number is for licenses," Neil said. "The state could potentially speed that up and put moratoriums on licenses, right and then make it not available as much. But in the sense of how the industry grows and why we’re seeing so much growth so fast is because there’s no intervention on that part. So the same thing that makes it awesome is the same thing that cripples it, too.”
I ask point blank, Do you two think that there is a bubble here, brewing in southwest Michigan, or Michigan in general?
“Oh yeah, definitely," Niel says.
Those low prices that keep customers crossing borders is hardly helping.
Neil says "A lot of businesses are operating at a loss right now because the inventory makes no money if they hold onto it, right?”
Local governments get a flat amount of tax dollars for each licensed shop in its borders. And if shops start to close, the ripple effects will go beyond just staff filing for unemployment.
“If there is an oversaturation of the market, of number of dispensaries throughout the region, or if Indiana adopted laws that legalized cannabis, certainly we would see a lowering of the income," said Boeskool.
In fact, during my interview with Boeskool, he confirmed that Niles had one less dispensary.
That day, May 8, 2025, we drove out to Firefly Small Batch Cultivation and Dispensary. Neighbors said the business closed down earlier that week, ostensibly due to financial troubles.
Their website is still up. Googling them shows they're still open, seven day a week, 10am-8pm. Calling their number during business hours takes you straight to voicemail. Their door was locked when we stopped by, shortly after 11am that morning.
Driving by on May 14, their lot was still empty.
We have not been able to get in contact with Firefly's owners to confirm why they closed, and it's unclear if any other dispensaries in Southwest Michigan are at risk of shuttering any time soon.
Just as unclear is how many dispensaries the market can continue to support, as more and more take root in Southwest Michigan.
Last November, voters in Niles Charter township said 'yes' to dispensaries and their board approved an ordinance to bring in pot shops right on the edge of the Indiana-Michigan border, potentially short-stopping the remaining dispensaries in Niles and Buchanan.
New Buffalo Township has seen at least fifty dispensary applications since they were first allowed, though as of this February, they established a moratorium on new licenses.
Neil Clementson believes it's going to take more and more states to legalize cannabis to prevent future bubbles, saying “Overall, I think that as the industry grows and more states come on that we’re going to see prices click closer across the nation, and prices will get closer to what people are paying on the West Coast to what they’re paying here."
Will cannabis be legalized federally in the U.S? The future is hazy to say the least.
President Donald Trump's current pick to lead the D-E-A, Terrence Cole, remains uncommitted to the idea.
For the dispensaries in southwest Michigan, none of the managers I spoke with are breaking a sweat over increased competition.
“I’ll tell you how we’re gonna win. It’s with our customer service," said Attallah. "I’ll put my team up against any team in the cannabis industry across the world, not only here in Michigan."
Brojek said “Obviously there’s competition that is all around, at the end of the day, but that’s about us staying innovative, staying on the next level on the cutting edge of how we do things."
As long as the price is right, customers will keep coming back.
“I live so close to Illinois but it’s not even worth my hassle because of how expensive it is and the taxes and everything like that," said a man coming to New Buffalo from Indiana. "Michigan is my go-to.”
Now, Michigan is considering raising the taxes on cannabis sales by 32 percent, ostensibly to pay for road work statewide. It's another move that has many fearing for the future of the industry, but it's also unclear if the state will move forward with that increase.