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Progress made, but still a long way to go

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Illinois

In late July, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a second round of conditional adult use cannabis dispensary licenses that brought the total number of issued licenses to 177.

The applicants, all of whom qualify as social equity applicants, have 180 days to obtain a physical storefront location and the full adult use dispensing organization license. According to the state, of the business selected for the licenses, 41% are majority black owned, 7% are majority white owned, 4% are majority Latino owned and 38% did not disclose the owner’s race. […]

“We need to continue to remove barriers to our viability, both on the cultivation side and the retail side,” Parnell said. “There’s still some pretty significant barriers to viability for us as craft growers … And that feeds over into the retail side because now we have 177 new social equity businesses that need product and they need a diversity of product that we need to get that in their hands … so we need to remove barriers for us to be successful. And we also need state funding more quickly.” […]

Similarly, on the expungement side, Brandon Williams, supervising attorney of criminal records at Cabrini Green Legal Aid, said while a great deal of progress has been made, he hopes to get the word out to more people about the free resources made available for expungement via New Leaf Illinois.

“There have been hundreds of thousands of cannabis convictions and arrests expunged already, but there’s still a long way to go. We believe there are over 700,000 cannabis arrest convictions within the state of Illinois, and we are still working to lower that number each and every day through the court system and through the automatic process,” Williams said. “People can get free assistance from an attorney getting their criminal records expunged and sealed in the state of Illinois. We’ve been trying hard for the last two and a half years to get the word out as much as possible, but we still haven’t seen the numbers that we anticipated in regards to people signing up to get this free assistance … I think the word still needs to get out more into the actual communities where the war on drugs impacted the most people, which obviously is in the Black and brown neighborhoods.”

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Aug 8, 22 @ 9:56 am

Comments

I hope that fairness continues in the awarding of licenses and contracts, but if anyone thinks that operating a cannabis dispensary is simple, then they will be in for a surprise. Just read the Illinois Department of Financial and Regulation website to gather info.

Comment by 14th ward Monday, Aug 8, 22 @ 11:01 am