12/18/2019
After almost half a year of debating, Bloomington has finally approved cannabis sales starting January 1st, 2020, by a vote of 8-1 with Ward 3 Alderperson Mboka Mwilambwe being the sole prohibition vote. The Monday night Bloomington City Council meeting was well attended by the citizenry with the majority being for abolition of prohibition of cannabis and a small, yet vocal and cantankerous minority continuing the 60 year failure that is prohibition. City Council debated the topic for at least an hour, carefully testing the political viability of the various nuances of regulating cannabis. Ultimately, the council only approved dispensaries deferring the other options for a later date.
Up to two dispensaries will be permitted within city limits and these businesses cannot be “within 500 feet of a school, nursery, place of worship, daycare, residential care home, park or playground, or within 250 feet of a residential area.”
Taxing cannabis sales at 3% passed the council unanimously.
Ward 6’s Jen Carrillo also successfully reduced the fines on the remaining cannabis laws. That vote passed unanimously as well. “Unlawful or underage possession would come with a $100 fine or eight hours of community service. Having a cannabis sativa plant would lead to a $150 fine and buying cannabis for a minor would lead to a $300 fine.”
But while prohibition is no longer the law, its smoky remnants continue to cough up the attempts for freedom. There is still a prohibition on on-site consumption, along with cultivation, infusers, processing, and transportation though there appears to be a willingness to revisit these issues at a later time.
The council voted on an opt-out option but this failed 3-6 (Mwilambwe, Ward 2 Donna Boelen, & Ward 9 Kimb Bray all voted for prohibition).
The council then voted on whether to approved the planning commission’s plan. The Planning Commission recommended all forms of cannabis businesses be allowed including on-site consumption. The setback limits were also 250 feet for schools, places of worship, & parks and only 100 feet from residential areas. Anti-prohibitionist Jen Carrillo argued we should approve the planning commission’s recommendation & questioned why we even have commissions if we don’t take their advice seriously. Prohibitionist Boelen retorted that the Planning Commission went way overboard with their recommendations especially on the issue of on-site consumption saying that was a policy decision not a zoning decision (how it’s not both I fail to comprehend). The council voted this measure down 2-7 with only Carrillo and Ward 8’s Jeff Crabill voting in favor.
Crabill attempted to get all cannabis business’ approved with the exception of on-site consumption, but this too failed to pass by 3-6 with only Crabill, Carrillo, and Ward 4’s Julie Emig voting in favor.
Carrillo tried to bring the issue of on-site consumption to a standalone vote. The majority of anti-prohibition advocates including the NAACP and Black Lives Matter supported this measure, but it too was voted down 2-7 with only Carrillo & Crabill voting in favor. The resistance of this issue is odd. I’m not particularly moved by objections that there will be lingering stenches wafting among the corridors of our city causing distress as it is blown about. When you sniff carefully at this objection, you’ll find it doesn’t pass the smell test. We have long had cigar lounges and hookah bars with no deleterious side effects to the local environment. I doubt any business that implements on-site use would open up shop without an appropriate ventilation system. Perhaps we should ask our dedicated HVAC neighbors whether they believe its possible to minimize this issue. By allowing on-site use, we could have helped open a market to all the HVAC workers creating even more jobs. I’ve also heard objections of on-site use because of a possible increase in impaired driving. Its a concern for sure, but overblown. And, while Julie Emig talked about studies showing an increase in cannabis-related traffic crashes (she didn’t actually provide a source for this assertion), what studies have actually said is there was an increase in the amount of people who were involved in crashes and had THC in their system, but these studies couldn’t determine whether the driver was impaired or not.1
It’s truly unfortunate that these other issues were voted down. We hear over and over about how there will still be a black market because it will be cheaper, and yet the government seems intent on making legal cannabis as expensive and difficult to obtain as possible. Refusing to allow cultivation (growing the cannabis plant), processing (extracting THC from cannabis), infusion (the infusion of THC into other products like edibles), and transportation (getting all these various products to the dispensary) will only increase the cost. Cannabis is still illegal at the federal level. All of the legal cannabis available for sale will have to come from within Illinois. However, the cultivation, processing, infusion, and transportation will have to occur outside of the city. Won’t this inevitably raise the price even higher?
We also hear skepticism about how much will actually be available. Will supply be able to keep up with demand? It could if municipalities didn’t ban cultivators & processors from their jurisdictions. This just means there will be less of these businesses in Illinois limiting the source from the beginning. Bloomington essentially allowed cannabis to be sold in Bloomington, but amputated several of its limbs to prevent it from being as successful as it can be. One of the goals of legalization & regulation is precisely to move a market which already exists out of the illegal, alternative economy. Alderperson Crabill stated, “We aren’t creating a market; we’re regulating it.”
I support regulating cannabis sales to guarantee a certain level of quality & safety, but I can’t help agreeing with conservatives on how the government (both state & local) seems hellbound on making this market arduous for consumers; while, at the same time, privileging the big pharma companies that have the capital & legal team to cut through the red tape at the expense of small businesses. Sure there are lots of complicated social equity points available to minority growers, but will this be enough to overcome the byzantine regulations the state has set?
Reticence towards fully embracing a legal cannabis market continues to waft into the discussion, a stenchy remnant of prohibition concepts that burn the throat & blind the eyes obfuscating the truth about cannabis usage. The many cannabis fans have a great deal more smoke to blow away in order to properly normalize a drug which is much safer than tobacco or alcohol. It’s unfortunate that the equivocation of alcohol and cannabis has occurred. While strategically it has helped to normalize cannabis consumption, this equivocation quickly runs into problems. The fact is the two are not comparable. Cannabis, on almost every metric, is significantly safer that alcohol. Just in levels of impairment, its like night and day. Someone who is impaired from alcohol is a far bigger danger while driving than someone who is slightly impaired from cannabis. If we can have a bar selling shots of straight liquor on every corner, we can certainly allow a few cannabis cafes where people can safely use this drug. We have seen the effects of prohibition. Let us abolish the very concept of prohibition from our vocabularies as prohibition has only led to more problems than the use of this relatively safe drug.
What are these prohibition concepts grounded on? A myth, nothing more. This fictitious belief that cannabis use is a marginal activity only done by a depraved few forgets that every ward in Bloomington already has a very successful cannabis market. “It is too new, too soon,” prohibitionists cry from beneath the sand where their heads are buried.
One unrepentant prohibitionist that spoke Monday night was Karen Kinsella, a counselor at YouthBuild McLean County. She made the laughably absurd statement that society hasn’t spent enough time focusing on the public safety issue of cannabis. Seriously? 60 years of draconian policing from prohibition isn’t enough time? The police really need more time to weigh in on this? Karen went on to ask a series of ridiculous questions like “Are police officers trained on how to determine being inebriated on pot?” (they have been for over 6 decades; I’m not sure why they would suddenly forget come January 1st). “What is the metric for determining intoxication biologically?” (You get blood tested, and if it comes up positive, you get a DWI. Seriously, this isn’t new. Here’s an article about what Illinois police are doing that would have taken one minute to Google).
Prohibitionist Mwilambwe gave a litany of reasons for his regressive stance. He pointed to the fact that 80% of local jurisdictions in both California & Michigan have opted out. Of course, he doesn’t actually tell us the population of these jurisdictions leaving one to assume that these localities have more empty land than people. Kim Bray and others can’t help but inflate the support of prohibition. Even though studies show that Illinois residents overwhelmingly support cannabis legalization, prohibitionists want us to believe there are all these people against cannabis (but, somehow they’re so shy as to hide from pollsters or speaking out to City Council).
Mwilambwe also worried about property values (forgetting the number one factor in property values is a strong economy which legalized cannabis would help produce with jobs); he lamented how cannabis might “change the character” of the community, again forgetting that cannabis is already here. Prohibitionists love to bring up these vague and abstract concepts like culture or character, which society has no real metrics for determining yet this valued character that is threatened by ending prohibition always seems to correspond to the mythical worldview of what they think the city is. Mwilambwe was skeptical of the monetary benefits of legalized weed (it’s not like this is going to cost the city any money to allow sales) pointing out the trivial fact that economies are finite (but forgetting they are also fluid).
Sneaky, slick, and slippery Centrist Scott Black of Ward 7 continued his snake-like stepping around the issues. While he ultimately supported dispensaries, he said the other options put him in a tough position (can you imagine the many strange positions of Scott Black?). He had so many unanswered questions like Is staff trained on this issue? Is the city able to go into dispensaries, check IDs and shut it down if necessary? If you have not followed this debate closely, you might be lead to believe Scott is just being cautious, that he favors due diligence & objective observations. But, Scott asked the exact same questions back in October and City staff made it clear back then that they were trained and the City had plenty of authority to punish dispensaries in violation of the law. Is Scott not actually paying attention at meetings? What exactly is he doing with all his free time?
Cannabis will be legal for everyone 21 and older starting January 1st, 2020. The state has authorized possession of 30 grams. Adults also can have 5 grams of cannabis concentrate for vaping, or 500 milligrams of the psychoactive ingredient THC in cannabis-infused products.
Stores won’t be able to sell more than the legal limit in a single transaction. Dispensaries will likely only accept cash. Because cannabis is illegal federally, most banks & credit card companies refuse to offer service to these establishments.
