County Cannabis Update

The Champaign County Circuit Clerk and and State's Attorney have both been in the news recently talking about their work and concerns with the possible legalization of recreational marijuana in Illinois. From the News-Gazette a couple weeks back:

Champaign circuit clerk among those working on potential issues with legal pot
Champaign County Circuit Clerk Katie Blakeman is working behind the scenes to prepare for what's coming when and if recreational cannabis for adults is legalized in Illinois...

Blakeman has been part of a working group convened by Deputy Governor Christian Mitchell and bill co-sponsors Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, and Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, that's been meeting for about three months.
The group is brainstorming how to deal with issues that will come up when legalized cannabis rolls out.
Those include equity and finance, public education and awareness, record expungement and criminal justice, home growing, licensing and market size, tax structure, and revenue allocation...

She said the sponsors of the bill to legalize recreational pot want a mechanism in place to allow people convicted of minor cannabis possession charges to shed that past without having to go through a lengthy, complicated petition process...

Blakeman said some legislators also assumed that Illinois State Police would have all records of cannabis convictions, but Blakeman noted that anyone not fingerprinted would not be in the state police records system. Someone arrested for a small amount of cannabis could very well have been given a notice to appear in court by police rather than being arrested and fingerprinted, so a record of their conviction would be found at the county circuit clerk level.

A lot more additional information at the full article here. There was also another Cheat Sheet post on challengers to Blakeman for the Circuit Clerk seat in 2020 here. The Champaign County State's Attorney interview with WCIA is available in a video segment and article here. Excerpt:

From a legal perspective in general, there are parts of the proposal Rietz says she doesn't have a problem with, but there are some issues she has with the expungement provision as it stands right now.

Generally, the expungement process has to be initiated by the person with the record. This proposal outlines an automatic expungement. Rietz says this means police would have to provide manpower and money to go through the records to decide who qualifies and to destroy those records.

"It seems like a significant allocation of resources for something I'm not really sure has a great benefit."

Expungement under this bill is not something she fully supports.

Rietz says, "I struggle with the concept that somebody who committed an offense and was convicted of that offense, without having to even request it, gets that offense stricken off their record."

Full article and link with video segment here. WILL had an article and radio interview on the same topic here. Excerpt:

“I personally don't have an issue with adults who can make decisions for themselves who want to use cannabis in their living rooms,” Rietz said. “I have concern about safety on our roadways, and I think that we are working with the legislature on addressing those issues as well.”

Rietz said there needs to be funding to train officers to detect impairments associated with cannabis use.

“The field sobriety tests that one does when there's a concern about alcohol use are different from the tests to detect cannabis use,” Rietz explained. “And there are only in the entire state of Illinois 50 police officers who are certified to do those tests. In Champaign County, we have one. So that's a safety issue and a funding issue that we need to address before we can move forward.”

Full article and audio interview here.