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About a week after the federal government officially closed for business, Michigan’s state lawmakers managed to avoid a shutdown of their own by approving a hard-fought local budget, the product of some tough compromises between a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-majority Senate that had delayed the process for months. Whatever relief Michiganders may have felt has quickly ceded to outrage over one of the bill’s key provisions: an added 24 percent wholesale tax on marijuana sales, to take effect in the new year. The tax will inevitably hike costs on its famously dirt-cheap products and possibly crush the flowering industry—just seven years after Michiga

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