A state senator who has been trying to pass legislation to legalize marijuana use brought her case to La Grange Tuesday, but didn’t win support from the area’s state representative, who is also the House Republican leader.
State Sen. Heather Steans, a Democrat from Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, said making it legal to possess small amounts of marijuana would help shore up the budget by bringing in a source of tax revenue. But she also maintained marijuana is safer than over consumption of alcohol.
“Six people a day die from alcohol poisoning,” Steans said. “We don’t know a single person who has died from cannabis.”
More than 100 people turned out for what was billed as the Great Marijuana Debate, co-hosted by the League of Women Voters of the La Grange area and the Coalition for a Drug Free Lyons Township.
Rep. Jim Durkin, the Western Springs Republican who also serves as minority leader in the Illinois House, said that while he supports expanding medical marijuana to treat pain, he is not yet ready to support wholesale legalization.
Durkin said he wants to move slow to see how medical marijuana impacts the state before lawmakers simply make the drug legal. He also worried that it would get into the hands of kids, much the way minors can find ways around the state’s alcohol laws.
Steans had a hand in making medical marijuana legal. Gov. Bruce Rauner also signed a bill into law in August that expands access to medical marijuana for pain patients. Advocates say giving those who suffer with chronic pain access to marijuana will curb opiate abuse.
Dr. Aaron Weiner, the one doctor on the panel and the director of Addiction Services at Linden Oaks Behavioral Health, said he believes the marijuana that is available now is much stronger than strains just several decades ago.
Even between plants, he said, THC — the chemical that gets people high — can vary greatly. Weiner also was concerned that police don’t have a way to reliably measure a driver’s intoxication after smoking marijuana.
“We have no effective .08 of marijuana,” he said, referring to the legal percentage of alcohol allowed in a driver’s bloodstream. “There are studies coming out that show any THC in the blood and even 24 hours afterward, can impair driving.”
Laurie Braun, a co-chair of the La Grange League of Women Voters, said the forum was not intended to settle any debates, but to educate voters as marijuana policy changes.
“We wanted people to be informed,” Braun said. “The league normally studies an issue before it takes a position.”
Braun said the statewide League of Women Voters has yet to weigh in on the issue of marijuana policy, but once that happens the group could have an official position on the issue.
Steans said she recognizes that if marijuana advocates want action on the issue, the state house might not be the place to look for it.
“Politicians don’t always make rational choices all the times,” she said. “They’re risk-averse. It’s easy to run on tough on crime. We’ve seen that play out over the decades and it’s harder to get people to run the other way for fear of what will happen on election day.”
The only member of the clergy on the panel, the Rev. Alexander Sharp, executive director of the group Clergy for a New Drug Policy, said the best way to test the impact is to simply legalize it.
Sharp said people of color face marijuana-related arrests and jail at far greater numbers than their white counterparts.
“It’s not just a war on drugs it’s a war on African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Mexican Americans,” he said.
But Will Jones, a communications associate with the Smart Approaches to Marijuana Outreach, raised concern that legal drugs have badly damaged communities of color.
Jones, who is African American and lives in Washington, D.C., said he can’t walk down the street without seeing liquor ads
“The closest store to my house is a liquor store. The next closest stores are convenience stores so plastered over with signs for cigarettes and beer that you can’t see inside,” Jones said.
“Maybe you heard we should regulate marijuana like liquor. And perhaps if you live in another neighborhood that’s not mine, that might sound like a good idea.”
Jones said his group is not looking to criminalize marijuana, but said he does not want to see another drug industry earn its wealth at the expense of communities.
“There is an industry that stands to make billions of dollars on getting people hooked on their particular product,” Jones said.
