Wednesday
\nwas the first of January, and in the current era, another New Year almost
\nalways means another new state where recreational cannabis is legal. <\/p>\n
2020
\nwas Illinois\u2019s turn, and for the most part, everything went to script,
\nfollowing the routine established in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Nevada,
\nCalifornia, and (most) of the other 10 states that have legalized small amounts
\nof recreational cannabis for adults 21 and over, and permitted said adults to
\npurchase legal weed in stores. (More than three years after its citizens
\nlegalized, we\u2019re still waiting on Maine to open a recreational dispensary.)<\/p>\n
Illinois hit all the predictable notes. Long lines of eager cannabis customers in the chilly predawn, queued up outside the nearest of the state\u2019s three dozen dispensaries (and some would-be purchasers taking one look and turning back around for home, or for the underground market<\/a>). VIPs making the first celebratory and heavily documented purchases \u2014 in a mild twist, here\u2019s an actual elected official, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, picking up some edibles<\/a> at Cresco Labs\u2019s dispensary in Chicago \u2014 and then a flurry of news items totaling the first day of legal sales: 77,128 purchases, for a total of just shy of $3.2 million worth of product sold<\/a>.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t all this just great? Once the novelty of a first purchase has worn off, the answer is, \u201cwell, maybe.\u201d It remains to be seen if sales will hit the ambitious goals set by lawmakers and regulators; if roughly 36 dispensaries, most of which are concentrated in the Chicagoland area, is sufficient to quell underground market demand, in a state with more than 12 million people (reader: it almost certainly is not); if Illinois\u2019s equity programs will get off the ground or if one of the most capitalized cannabis markets will benefit only a select few<\/a>. But what was pretty good, and somewhat different from the other states that preceded Illinois, was what happened the night before \u2014 when 11,000 cannabis convictions were wiped from the books.<\/a><\/p>\n One Fulfilling a campaign promise made by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois legalized cannabis via the Legislature rather than a voter initiative.<\/a> Among Pritzker\u2019s promises was that any legalization would also involve a clearing of cannabis offenders\u2019 criminal records. And true to his word, Prtizker rang in the New Year on Dec. 31 by issuing 11,000 pardons. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are ending the 50-year-long war on cannabis,\u201d Pritzker said That\u2019s So TELL US<\/strong>, does cannabis legalization without pardons make sense to you?<\/p>\n The post Illinois Kicks off Legalization the Right Way, With Pardons<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Wednesday was the first of January, and in the current era, another New Year almost always means another new state where recreational cannabis is legal. 2020 was Illinois\u2019s turn, and for the most part, everything went to script, following the routine established in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, California, and (most)Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,1051,4060,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40436,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40435\/revisions\/40436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nof marijuana legalization\u2019s central selling points is justice, as in
\nrecognizing that decades of low-level cannabis arrests did nothing but fill
\nprisons and wreck lives and communities at great economical and societal cost \u2014
\nand that \u201cundoing\u201d all that, somehow, is in the interest of justice. A great
\nflaw in other states\u2019 legalization schemes is that this justice was not
\nautomatic, or guaranteed, requiring district attorneys to hire coders to write
\ncannabis-crime-clearing algorithms.<\/p>\n
\nin a statement, as per the AP. \u201cWe are restoring rights to many tens of
\nthousands of Illinoisans. We are bringing regulation and safety to a previously
\nunsafe and illegal market. And we are creating a new industry that puts equity
\nat its very core.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\njust the start. According to state figures, there are more than 116,000
\nconvictions eligible for pardons under Illinois\u2019s new law permitting possession
\nof up to 30 grams of cannabis flower in the state. Another 34,000 people who
\nwere found guilty in a previous era of possessing more than 30 grams need to
\nactively file paperwork to have their records cleared \u2014 though if the local
\ndistrict attorney\u2019s office wants to clear their own books, they can \u2014 and in a
\ntroubling quirk, any cannabis crime that also involves a violent crime is not
\neligible for expungement.<\/p>\n
\nthere\u2019s room for improvement, and much work to be done.\u00a0 Still, the fact that a nod to justice
\nhappened before any sales occurred sets Illinois apart and also sets an
\nencouraging precedent: Maybe pardons should precede profit, everywhere
\nlegalization is considered? Lawmakers and advocates pondering why legalization
\nworked in Illinois \u2014 or at least worked long enough to become law \u2014 and failed
\nin New Jersey and New York should take heed.<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: Illinois Kicks off Legalization the Right Way, With Pardons<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"