Some Predict Recreational Marijuana Is Just Around The Corner For Illinois

[Jacob Redmond]

Doors haven't even opened to medical marijuana dispensaries and there's already talk of legalizing recreational pot.

Legally lighting up - puffing purely for pleasure - could happen in Illinois sooner than you think.

Kathie Kane-Willis thinks legislation will be introduced this year. She is the director of the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy, which helped shape the state's medical marijuana law.

Kane-Willis says recreational pot could be a reality in three to seven years.

Washington State gave the green light to medical marijuana in 1998, Colorado in 2000. Both states legalized marijuana for recreational use in 2012.

"Illinois is cash-strapped. It's broke," Kane-Willis says.

She estimates the state could make about $125 million a year growing and selling weed on the open market.

That's money that could fund the pension, fix education or pay for Medicaid. In fact, she says, legislators are currently working on a bill to study the issue.

Another big step is a newly introduced bill that decriminalizes marijuana.

"This bill takes it that one step further and says this activity, possessing a certain amount of this plant, is completely legal," says Ali Nagib of NORML.

And opinions are changing about it. Nagib says a shift in public opinion could also speed up recreational legalization in Illinois. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 51 percent of Americans say the drug should be legalized. In 2004, it was just 34 percent.

You'll find plenty of "yay"-sayers in the liberal suburb of Evanston.

Legalized medical marijuana will soon be sold in a storefront in downtown Evanston, just a block from where Kate Mahoney runs a drug-abuse program. You won't get her to agree to recreational pot.

"Marijuana in general has over 430 different chemicals," she says. "It's harder for people to control than they might think."

In addition to bringing in millions in tax revenues for medical marijuana, advocates say legalizing recreational pot could save the state about $150 million by no longer arresting people for drug-related crimes like possession.

News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Some Predict Recreational Marijuana Is Just Around The Corner For Illinois « CBS Chicago
Author: Dorothy Tucker
Contact: dmtucker@cbs.com
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Website: CBS Chicago

 

[HomeGrownNLD]

More and more states loosening up their MJ laws. A good way forward, I hope for all Americans that federal decriminalization of MJ will happen sooner than later.

It's hard to believe that the Netherlands was once a beacon of light for most MJ users for our progressive laws, but it's getting harder and harder the last few years. On the 1st of March a new law will be in effect over here that once a grows/hydroshop owner or anyone else for that matter (electrician, landlords, transport companies and distribution centers) is suspected of facilitating in the illegal grow of cannabis and that can be in all kinds of forms such as: selling, offering, possessing, transport etc and knows or has even the slightest presumption of committing a crime under article 11 of the Opiumlaw can face up to 3 years in prison.

They say this law only effects large scale grow's but the law leave's enough room to also prosecute growers who grow to sustain in their own needs.

Still I think we are at the forefront of something big, more and more countries are thinking about loosening up their cannabis laws and I for one can only hope that Dutch politicians and the rest of the world will finally open their eyes and look at the evidence and finally legalize cannabis in all it's forms

Peace and
HomeGrownNLD