The Michigan Medical Marijuana Act went into effect last week, but patients hoping to immediately take advantage of the new law will have to wait.

Patients are more likely see the effects of the legislation in April, said James McCurtis, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Community Health.

The act, which was passed as Proposal 1 on the Michigan ballot in November, allows patients to use, buy and grow marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Dec. 4, the day the proposal was implemented, marked the beginning of a deliberation period regarding the law’s enforcement. Legislators have 120 days to fine-tune the proposal’s rules and regulations.

Even a doctor’s note won’t be enough to protect patients if they try to use marijuana medicinally between now and then.

Michigan residents will need signed documentation from a physician before they can apply to the program that verifies they’re suffering from one of the ailments outlined in the act.

After that, the Department of Community Health will have 15 days to accept or deny the request. If it chooses to accept the case, it will issue the patient an identification card.

The department is drafting regulations that will be available to the public online by Dec. 15. The regulations will address aspects of enforcement not specified in the act, like how marijuana will be disposed if the patient dies, cost of application to the program and explanations of legal terms in the proposal.

McCurtis said the department will hold a public hearing about the regulations sometime in early to mid-January to hear opinions on how to best implement the act.

The State Office of Administrative Hearings and Rules will then examine the proposed regulations. Once it signs off on the rules, they will go through the Legislative Services Bureau, a process likely to take months to complete.

“The program is expected to begin on April 4, but until then, everything is the same as it was in June, in July, in August,” McCurtis said. “And it will remain the same until the medical marijuana program is officially put in place.”

The patient ID card or, if necessary, a caregiver, will be enough to protect patients from prosecution for one year, after which re-application to the program is required.

LSA junior Chris Chiles, executive director of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said the proposal’s passing was great news for patients who had been waiting to legally use marijuana as a way to ease pain.

“Doctors are able to make recommendations to treat or alleviate patients’ debilitating conditions, which is great,” he said. “The thing about this is that it’s not a prescription — it can’t be written on a little pad. The doctors are really just the gatekeepers in this.”