Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle signaled her support Tuesday for an advisory referendum on whether recreational marijuana use should be made legal.
Preckwinkle, a longtime advocate for reducing the focus on the decadeslong war on drugs to concentrate more on violent crime, backs legalizing recreational marijuana in general as well as putting a referendum on the 2018 ballot, spokesman Frank Shuftan said.
Legalization would require changing state law, something that has been proposed by Democratic lawmakers but isn’t expected to surface again in Springfield until next year at the earliest.
“We understand the Springfield piece will be a more lengthy and potentially complicated process,” Shuftan said.
After his announcement, Fritchey made the rounds of the county boardroom at an unrelated committee meeting, asking for support.
If approved by the full board, Cook County voters would be asked if they support legalization of recreational marijuana use by people age 21 and older. The advisory vote would not have the force of law. Commissioners could vote on putting the question on the ballot at their December meeting.
A longtime advocate of making recreational marijuana use legal, Fritchey pointed to the legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington. State and local governments in Illinois could expect to bring in $500 million a year in pot taxes based on those states’ experiences, he said.
In addition, stopping the prosecution of possession of smaller amounts of marijuana could eliminate millions of dollars in spending by the county’s criminal justice system — including costs for the courts that handle the cases, the county attorneys who prosecute and defend those charged, and the jail that ends up holding the accused while they await trial.
“It’s about unclogging a court system that is overburdened,” Fritchey said. “If we can take these cases out of the court system, we will be doing a tremendous service not just to the individuals but to the court system as well.”
“Almost 90 percent of these cases get dismissed, doing nothing but leaving individuals with an arrest record,” he added. “We are wasting court resources. We are damaging lives. And we have the ability to do better.”
Fritchey — a former state lawmaker — also said he hoped a successful ballot question in Cook County would spur legislators to take a vote on a potentially thorny issue during an election year in 2018.
Sen. Heather Steans and Rep. Kelly Cassidy, both of whom like Fritchey live on the city’s North Side, introduced legislation in March to allow the possession of up to 28 grams of pot, or about an ounce, and to grow five plants. Their proposals call for a tax of $50 an ounce, plus the standard state 6.25 percent sales tax. Local governments like the city and county collect their own sales taxes, so they likely also would bring in more money as a result of legalization.
Based on sales of pot in Colorado, the Marijuana Policy Project, a national advocacy group, estimates sales in Illinois could generate between $350 million and $700 million in government revenue a year.
credit:chicagotribune.com
