Deputy
governor Christian Mitchell is Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s go-to guy on marijuana
legalization.
Mitchell
last spring spoke at legislative committees and community forums, pushing plans
to legalize marijuana for recreational use. As recently as last month, he was telling
reporters that any veto-session changes to the legalization bill that passed
last spring will be minor.
“What
we have said to everyone is that the trailer bill for veto is going to be
highly technical stuff that needs to change in order to ensure a smooth roll
(out) into Jan. 1,” Mitchell told Capitol News Illinois. “It’s not a forum to
re-litigate issues on which folks lost out (in) negotiations.”
Mitchell
was less talkative when I caught up to him after a Monday press conference
outside Illinois Department of Transportation headquarters in Springfield,
where the governor and a host of legislators broke their own arms with back
pats while announcing a $23.5 billion transportation spending package.
I
mentioned a story that had run in that morning’s New York Times and asked a simple (I thought) question: Is the
governor’s office considering changing the legalization law to remove sales of vaping
concentrates and oils from the list of cannabis products that will become legal
on Jan. 1?
Call
the Department of Health, Mitchell advised. But you’re with the governor’s
office, I noted, and you’ve been in charge of marijuana legislation for Pritzker.
“I’m not in charge of vaping for the governor’s office,” Mitchell told me.
Oh.
Emily
Bittner, Pritzker spokeswoman, intervened and told me to email questions to
her, even though I only had one yes-or-no question that the guy two feet away
should have been able to answer: Is the governor considering amending the law to
prohibit sales of cannabis vaping products once pot becomes legal in less than
three months? I sent Bittner an email asking exactly that. Haven’t heard back.
Also called the state Department of Health. A spokeswoman emailed back, saying
she’d check.
The
New York Times piece that prompted my
question concerned itself with the safety of vaping products containing THC,
the active ingredient in marijuana. At least 33 people nationwide have died
from vaping. The first reported death came two months ago in Illinois, where a
total of three people have died. Nearly 1,500 people across the nation have
fallen sick. Experts are blaming THC vaping products. The Center For Disease
Control has warned folks not to vape THC, regardless of whether products are purchased
legally or on the black market.
According
to the Times story, vaping products
account for 30% of the legal marijuana market, even though the folks who sell
it acknowledge they don’t know much about what they’re selling. “There’s a
glaring gap in trying to understand this product,” Jerred Kiloh, president of
the board of the United Cannabis Business Association, which represents
California pot stores, told the Times.
“We don’t know what the chemical composition is, and we especially don’t know what
the composition is once it’s been combined, heated and inhaled.” Neal Benowitz,
a University of California scientist who has long warned that vaping THC could
be hazardous, told the paper that he’d like to do research, but federal law,
which decrees pot to be a dangerous drug without a purpose, prohibits it. “I’m
not able to take products we think are hazardous and do analysis,” Benowitz
told the Times. “I can buy a vape
device around the corner, but I can’t bring it into the lab and test it.”
Less
than three weeks ago, Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, acknowledged a
health crisis but told the Chicago
Sun-Times that prohibiting sales of THC vaping products isn’t the answer. Since
Hutchinson, who is set oversee the state’s
marijuana industry – a cannabis czar thingy created by the legalization law
– told the Sun-Times that the state is good to go, the number of deaths and
illnesses has climbed both in Illinois and across the nation. Researchers have
hunches but no proof of the culprit. Previous guesses have been wrong, with the
Mayo Clinic debunking theories that Vitamin E or other substances used to
thicken THC oils are to blame.
Some
things are clear. A bunch of folks have gotten sick and died after vaping THC,
no one can say with certainty why that is, and Pritzker is pushing ahead with
plans to sell a potentially deadly product that the federal government has
warned folks to avoid. Pot, which has long enjoyed a reputation for never
killing anyone, should have been legalized a long time ago, but not like this.
Perhaps
coincidentally, vaping products will be taxed at 25%, the highest rate under
the legalization law, which levies a 10% tax on regular old weed, the kind you
smoke. On the other hand, the Pritzker administration has insisted that revenue
from a marijuana market worth as much as $1.5 billion a year has nothing to do
with policy.
I
would hate to think that the state is ignoring health concerns for fiscal
reasons. But it is hard to figure why Pritzker is going full-bongs-ahead on THC
vaping, particularly since he’s come out in favor of banning flavored
e-cigarettes. Until we know more, vaping THC seems as bad an idea as the state
allowing sales and collecting taxes.
SJ-R BLUES:
You know it’s bad when a politician complains about poor service from the local
daily, and Rep. Tim Butler, R-I Want My Paper, isn’t alone in bitching about
missed deliveries since the State
Journal-Register revamped its circulation operation last week. Butler has
tweeted his frustration: His paper hasn’t been delivered for several days and
calls to customer service haven’t helped. Nextdoor.com is blowing up with
complaints from other unhappy subscribers. Then there are folks like Virginia
Taylor and her husband Robert, who found out last week that their services are
no longer needed after delivering the SJ-R for nearly 25 years.
Carriers
had been told changes were coming, but Taylor says she didn’t realize that she
and her husband no longer had a route until the last minute. “They just threw
us out,” Taylor says. Both she and her husband are in their mid-70s, and the
routine is as important as the money. “It gets us out of bed in the morning,”
she says. “It gives us purpose and keeps us healthy, with the walking that we
do.” Twice, Taylor says, her husband has suffered heart attacks, once while
walking the route. “We weren’t late those days,” Taylor says. “We have never
missed a day. We have never been called because we didn’t show up.”
Other
carriers, also, have lost routes, including Susan Grant, who, like the Taylors,
had delivered the SJ-R for more than
two decades. “They let me go, they didn’t give me no reason why,” Grant says.
She recalls calling the SJ-R many
times after learning that changes were afoot, but only found out that she had
no route until the day it happened last week. “I had to keep calling and
calling,” says Grant, who celebrated her 70th birthday last week.
Grant says she’s been getting plenty of calls from upset customers. “My
customers, they’re not getting their papers like they should,” Grant says.
“They always call me. I told them, ‘You don’t call up there (to the SJ-R), you won’t get an answer, or
they’ll hang up on you.’ You don’t get to talk to people here; you talk to
someone in Ohio or Florida.”
Grant
and Taylor say they always had papers delivered by 5 a.m. In an email sent to
subscribers last week, the SJ-R acknowledges
issues. “Thank you for your patience as we continue to correct delivery issues
in your area,” the email signed “Customer Delivery Team” reads. “As you may
know, our delivery deadline for the State Journal Registered (sic) has changed
to 7:00 AM Monday through Sunday. As a result of this deadline change, our call
center is experiencing a heavy volume of callers and you could experience a
long wait time.” The email doesn’t state the previous delivery deadline. An
email to SJ-R general manager Eugene
Jackson wasn’t returned. Despite woes, the SJ-R on Sunday
published a help-wanted ad in all-caps: “NEWS CARRIERS WANTED.” Good luck with
that.
PROGRESS? After a
no-confidence vote in Superintendent Adam Ehrman, leadership of the New Berlin
Education Association last week met with district officials and pronounced the
confab a success. “We are looking forward to working with the (school board) to
improve culture and climate,” union president Joe Kindred wrote in a statement
issued afterward. Kindred tells me that he didn’t attend the meeting due to
concerns about personality conflicts between himself and Ehrman, who won a
unanimous vote of confidence from the school board after the union’s
no-confidence vote. “From our standpoint, it (the meeting) was a step in the
right direction,” Kindred says.
Then,
in a hastily arranged school board meeting held Monday morning, the board
accepted the effective-immediately resignation of Casey Wills, principal of New
Berlin Elementary School, where some past and present teachers, without
providing details, had expressed concerns about management style. “I know that
some will consider my resignation a victory,” Wills wrote in a letter of
resignation. “If there is a victory to be claimed, then it is mine to claim. I
have chosen to remove myself from an environment in which I have no voice.” Ehrman
says that Wills’ decision to quit was her own. Is everything peachy now? “We’re
optimistic right now, but we still have a long way to go,” Kindred says.
Contact Bruce
Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2019.
