* Crain’s Chicago Business posted my column early, so we get to talk about it on Friday instead of our usual Monday. It’s about legalizing cannabis and historical polling by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University which showed a marked switch in public opinion since its spring of 2017 poll, when support jumped from 45 percent to 66 percent, where it has stayed ever since. There’s also this aspect…

* Here you go…

Despite this, a majority of Illinois House members have sponsored a resolution asking that the General Assembly slow down the legalization process.

We don’t have poll numbers for all these legislators’ districts, but we do have results from a March 2018 nonbinding referendum when 63 percent of Chicago and suburban Cook County voters said they favored legalizing cannabis.

I asked my pal Scott Kennedy at Illinois Election Data to crunch the numbers for a few districts represented by “go slow” legislators, and he graciously agreed.

The chief sponsor of that resolution is Rep. Marty Moylan, a Des Plaines Democrat. The referendum passed with 62 percent in Moylan’s district. In fact, about a thousand more people voted “yes” than voted for Moylan, who ran unopposed.

About 63 percent voted to legalize cannabis in the 38th House District, which is represented by freshman Rep. Debbie Meyers-Martin, an Olympia Fields Democrat. Meyers-Martin is a co-sponsor of Moylan’s resolution. (Six of her district’s 112 precincts are in Will County, so the Cook County referendum wasn’t held in her entire district.)

And almost 63 percent voted for the referendum in Rep. Bob Rita’s district. Rita, D-Blue Island, is a “go slow” co-sponsor, but he’s also a key legislator involved with expanding legalized gambling, which is somewhat ironic.

A deliberative legislative process is fine by me. But cannabis legalization needs to get done this year, and when the time comes to vote, these legislators and others should listen to the vast majority of their constituents and legalize it already.

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