Illinois Medical Marijuana Use Has Increased Under Strict Regulation As Business Expands

In a warehouse in Joliet, hundreds of marijuana plants sway under high-intensity lights, taking in carbon dioxide-rich air, sucking up a constant feed of nutrients and bristling with buds.

Like Olympic athletes, the plants are rigorously trained and intensively pampered. Tiny predator bugs patrol the surface of the vegetation, hunting down any pests. Workers prune stems and leaves to put all the plants' energy into buds that produce the drug's euphoric and medicinal effects. The process churns out 200 pounds of high-grade pot every month.

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Last week, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law reductions in the criminal penalties for minor marijuana possession in Illinois. Previously, those convicted of marijuana possession faced possible jail time; now, just a citation and a fine.

This reminds us of an age-old admonition: "Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you necessarily should."

Critics of this more liberal (or libertarian, depending upon your political persuasion) policy toward marijuana have reason to worry.

As reported by the New England Journal of Medicine, there is an inverse correlation between the perceived risk of marijuana and the incidence of people's use of it. Simply put, the less risky people view marijuana, the more likely they are to use - and abuse - it.

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Governor Signs Legislation to Issue Citations Instead of Time in Jail

SPRINGFIELD - Getting caught with small amounts of marijuana will result in citations akin to a traffic ticket instead of the possibility of jail time under legislation Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law Friday.

Rauner's approval of the decriminalization measure comes after he used his amendatory veto powers last year to rewrite similar legislation he argued would have allowed people to carry too much pot and fine violators too little.

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(AP) - Illinois' experiment with medical marijuana has earned a boost thanks to Gov. Bruce Rauner's approval of legislation extending the state pilot program for 2 1/2 years and including two more medical conditions.

On Friday, medical marijuana advocates and experts called it a turning point that gives patients guaranteed access to the drug and provides confidence to those selling and cultivating it in the state. Rauner signed the measure Thursday night.

"It's a very good thing for us," said Charles Bachtell, founder and CEO of Cresco Labs, which holds cultivation permits in Illinois. "It's somewhat of an endorsement of the state saying, 'You're doing the right thing. We like what we're seeing from the pilot program and let's make some reasonable modifications.'"

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Illinois must add post-traumatic stress disorder to the list of diseases eligible for medical marijuana treatment, a Cook County judge ordered Tuesday in a sternly worded ruling that also said the state's public health director engaged in a "private investigation" that was "constitutionally inappropriate."

In a lawsuit filed by an Iraq war veteran, Judge Neil Cohen ordered Illinois Department of Public Health Director Nirav Shah to add PTSD within 30 days. It's the first decision among eight lawsuits filed by patients disappointed with across-the-board rejections by Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration of recommendations from an advisory board on medical marijuana.

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Terminal Illness Also Covered Under Bill for Rauner

Advocates for medical marijuana hope Illinois' plan to expand its program will give the industry the boost it needs to sustain itself - but some doctors warn that, despite changes made to protect them, they still have legal and medical concerns about the product.

After previously rejecting efforts to make medical marijuana available to more people, Gov. Bruce Rauner's office has indicated he will sign into law a bill to lengthen the pilot program by more than two years, to July 1, 2020. The legislation also adds two new qualifying conditions: post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness.

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As someone who writes about marijuana for a living, it recently started to seem a little strange I hadn't actually been to the promised land of legal cannabis that Colorado has become over the past couple of years.

So on Memorial Day weekend, I flew to Denver on a mission to buy weed legally.

I already knew the rules. Dispensaries close promptly at 7 p.m. You must be 21 or older to buy recreational cannabis; public consumption is a no-no. And so forth.

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Editor's note: This is day three of a four-day series that examines the impact heroin is having on the community through the eyes of the addicts, their families, law enforcement and the groups that provide treatment.

MOUNT ZION - Hearing a 35-year-old addict say things her son might have said made Kathy Burkham apprehensive.

That's because Tyler Yount's decision to use heroin "one more time" after staying clean 11 months and two weeks was the last one he ever made. He overdosed on June 14, 2009, dying at age 23.

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Editor's note: This is day two of a four-day series that examines the impact heroin is having on the community through the eyes of the addicts, their families, law enforcement and the groups that provide treatment.

DECATUR The scars on Lori Caldwell's arms are still there, though they've begun to lighten.

Caldwell wishes she could say the same for her mental and emotional scars.

Caldwell's voice becomes a whisper as she tries to talk through her tears while recounting her plunge into addictions to heroin and crack cocaine.

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Editor's note: This is day one of a four-day series that examines the impact heroin is having on the community through the eyes of the addicts, their families, law enforcement and the groups that provide treatment.

DECATUR Eric Buntain described the feeling of injecting heroin into his vein as "warm, euphoric, comfortable and relaxing: It feels great."

About 30 seconds after injecting heroin, there's a surge of warmth coming from the low spinal area, a rush of sensation and an overriding sense of well-being.

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For months, Illinois' fledgling medical cannabis industry had been limping along - dogged by uncertainties over its future and hurt by disappointingly low numbers of patients whose medical conditions qualified them for state certification cards.

But in the last few days, the clouds of gloom have lifted thanks to a compromise bill now awaiting Gov. Bruce Rauner's signature. The measure would extend the state medical cannabis pilot program by 2 1/2 years, to July 1, 2020. It would also expand the list of qualifying conditions, to include post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illnesses, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of new patients to the state registry.

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The days of "reefer madness" are long ago and far away.

Illinois legislators have sent to Gov. Bruce Rauner a bill decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana, a measure taken in recognition of its widespread use and the futility of imposing more serious penalties on violators. The bill incorporates changes suggested by Gov. Bruce Rauner in an amendatory veto of similar legislation passed last year.

Because the 2016 bill meets the objections he outlined in the 2015 bill, Rauner said he expects to sign it into law.

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Recent data from the CDC noted over 25,000 deaths in 2015 from prescription opiate overdose with an estimated 1.9 million people dependent on these medications. CDC Director Thomas Frieden said "we know of no other medication routinely used for nonfatal conditions that kills patients so frequently."

Since 1999, OxyContin and other opiate painkillers have been implicated in 190,000 lives lost from overdose. Furthermore, a study published in 2014 JAMA analyzed the association between medical cannabis laws and opioid overdose mortality rates. This study concludes that states with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8 percent lower annual opioid overdose mortality rate in comparison to states without medical cannabis laws, and these reductions in overdose mortality rates generally strengthen each year after implementation of such laws.

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Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control noted over 25,000 deaths in 2015 from prescription opiate overdose with an estimated 1.9 million people dependent on these medications. CDC director Thomas Frieden said, "We know of no other medication routinely used for nonfatal conditions that kills patients so frequently." And despite research showing that the higher the dose of an opioid the greater the risk of overdose and death, an investigation reveals that the opiate manufacturers urged doctors to prescribe stronger doses.

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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper opposed a 2012 state ballot initiative to allow the sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes. He told voters it might "increase the number of children using drugs and would detract from efforts to make Colorado the healthiest state in the nation. It sends the wrong message to kids that drugs are OK." Spurning his advice, voters approved it.

So he might be excused if, four years later, he were tempted to gaze upon the results of this experiment and say, "I told you so." In fact, Hickenlooper has done just the opposite. "It's beginning to look like it might work," he said recently.

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Gov. Charlie Baker yesterday decried the "proliferation" of pot use and called on authorities to prosecute to the "fullest" extent of the law a Webster man accused of being high in a crash that killed a state trooper, sparking a renewed focus on the state's marijuana laws amid a heated debate on legalization.

Police said David Njuguna was driving "impaired" after visiting a medical marijuana dispensary in Brookline and had a half-burnt marijuana cigarette in his car when he slammed into trooper Thomas L. Clardy's SUV in mid-March, killing the veteran officer.

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Proponents of marijuana legislation often purport its safety over legal drugs, particularly alcohol.

"I'd rather someone get behind the wheel stoned than drunk," more than one person has opined.

The notion is cringe-worthy. Impaired is impaired and driving that way is dangerous, potentially deadly, whether it involves alcohol, marijuana or prescription medication.

Unlike alcohol, though, where plenty of scientific data is available to support at what point a person becomes intoxicated, the science is iffy on marijuana.

That's why it's best Illinois not try to draw a line in the sand over marijuana impairment until a correlation can be made.

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House lawmakers sent Gov. Bruce Rauner legislation on Wednesday to decriminalize marijuana across Illinois, meaning people caught with small amounts of marijuana would be fined instead of receiving jail time.

The legislation incorporates changes the Republican governor suggested when he used his amendatory veto powers to rewrite similar legislation last year. Rauner said the old version would have let people carry too much marijuana and set fines too low.

The new edition drops the number of grams allowed from 15 to 10 and raises the range of fines from $55 to $125 to between $100 and $200. Municipalities could add to the fines and implement other penalties, such as a requirement for drug treatment. Citations would be automatically expunged twice a year, on Jan. 1 and July 1.

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For years in Illinois, it was extremely rare for anybody to be charged with murder for a drug-induced death, but times have changed.

Prosecutors across the nation have begun charging people with murder if they shared illegal drugs such as heroin with a friend or family member who died as a result.

Now there's a push to do the same in Illinois but, like the failed war on drugs, it risks making a bad situation worse. The more people are hesitant to call 911 in an overdose situation because they fear arrest, the more people will die.

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Authorities Are Filing More Drug-Induced Homicide Charges, but Complex Cases Show It's Hard to Decide Whether Offenders Deserve Prison or Treatment

When police and paramedics arrived at her aunt's apartment in Carol Stream, Adrianna Diana told them she and her friend Christopher Houdek had cooked and shot up heroin the night before.

Diana, 20, said she awoke covered in vomit, with Houdek, 21, next to her, unresponsive and "cool to the touch." Her aunt called 911.

Paramedics rushed Houdek to a hospital, where he died. The DuPage County coroner ruled his 2013 death an accident by "heroin intoxication." But prosecutors decided it was homicide- and charged Diana and two heroin dealers.

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