Marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes under the laws of 14 U.S. states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. New Jersey’s measure became law January 18.
In other words, two state departments had to create new policies before medical cannabis could actually be prescribed and provided. To this day neither has. According to Dan Linn, the 27-year-old director of the Illinois chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Human Services is “pretty much waiting for the Illinois State Police to give them rules to implement, and the police say they’re waiting for the Department of Human Services.”
As the chief sponsor, Lang decides when to put the bill to a vote. He says he’ll wait until he’s sure he has the votes he needs, because he can’t afford to fail: “Many members will vote for this but they’ll only do it once. They’ll go out on a limb once.”
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The current legislative session ends in early May. In the fall the General Assembly will convene for a veto session; its formal purpose is to consider legislation the governor might veto over the summer, and although the house could consider new business like the medical marijuana bill, a supermajority of 71 votes would be needed to pass it. “It is entirely possible that I won’t take a vote until January,” Lang says. A new General Assembly will be sworn in on Wednesday, January 12, and on the preceding Monday and Tuesday the old assembly will convene to wrap up unfinished business. Only a simple majority will be required to pass legislation on those two days, and Lang thinks he might be able to talk a few lame duck lawmakers into changing their positions on HB2514.
Senator Linda Holmes, from Plainfield, understands where lawmakers’ political fears come from. The first time the senate voted on the bill, in 2008, she was up for reelection, and cast a noncommittal “present” vote. A Democrat in a traditionally conservative district, she didn’t want to take a chance. “The mailer coming out would be ‘so-and-so supports drugs,”‘ she explains. “Unfortunately spin is spin, and that’s what happens.”
Falco says people who find out she uses medical marijuana often ask her if she’s high all the time. “Well, what does that mean to you?” she says. “My high is pain relief.” Once, she tells me, she and some friends smoked pot at a party for fun. Everyone else got stoned and silly, and one of Falco’s friends turned to her and said, “Julie, you’re not high.” It was true, she says: for her it was just another dose of medicine.
The most powerful force against the bill is the state’s law enforcement lobby, Linn says. Groups like the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association and the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police have a lot of pull in Springfield, and they argue that the law would be too hard to enforce and too easy to abuse. Their influence swayed state senator Pam Althoff, a McHenry County Republican who voted against the bill last May.
