Illinois is Going to Pot
by
John J. Dunphy
(This column was published in the 6/29/19 edition of The Telegraph of Alton, IL)
I never thought I’d live to see the day. Illinois has become the 11th state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill into law on June 25 that will allow Prairie State residents to purchase and possess up to one ounce of weed at a time. Non-residents, however, may possess only a half ounce of pot. Perhaps this will grow our state’s population by motivating persons to move here.
Like alcohol, marijuana will be available for purchase only to those 21 and older. The law goes into effect on January 1, 2020, so possession of pot remains a crime until that date. It’s easy to visualize New Year’s Eve revelers leaving parties to get in line outside the dispensaries that are authorized to sell marijuana. One can almost hear them banging on the doors and windows as they call out, “Hey, open up! You’ve got customers waiting out here!”
Legalizing pot makes economic sense, especially for a state as financially-strapped as ours. While campaigning for the governorship, Pritzker said that taxation on marijuana sales could generate as much as $1 billion annually in revenue. More recent estimates place pot revenue in 2020 at $58 million with weed tax money amounting to $500 million annually within five years. That’s still a lot of money for the Illinois treasury.
The pot revenue will be put to good use. Twenty-five percent of the money will be invested in impoverished communities, while 20 percent is earmarked to help fund substance-abuse treatment.
Like many area residents, I first smoked pot while a student at Southern Illinois University — Edwardsville in the 1970s. Weed was everywhere on campus in those days! Students found the side stairwells of the Peck Building to be accommodating spots for smoking a joint between classes. Indeed, their reputation was such that even faculty members joked about them. I recall one of my philosophy professors saying in class that these stairwells defied the laws of physics by allowing students to go down while also going up.
I also recall the smoke-ins that periodically were held on campus. Hundreds of students would occupy the grassy areas while smoking pot. Unable to arrest such a large number of persons, security personnel would just stroll around and observe us. We waved and gave them the peace sign.
From 1969 to 1980, the university hosted the Mississippi River Festival, which was a venue for performances by renowned singers and bands of that era. Non-pot smokers at those concerts were usually in the minority. There were times when the smoke was so pervasive that one might have mistaken the place for London during a particularly thick fog.
I usually reached the university by riding one of the buses that ran between the SIUE Dental School in Upper Alton and the main campus. Sometimes, while doing a bit of last-minute cramming for an exam, I’d smell pot smoke. I recall joking one day to a classmate that I had arrived at school by riding the Head Bus.
The old location of Alton Senior High school enjoyed a lively pot culture. I’d heard references to “Reefer Street,” where students regularly lighted up. I asked members of a Facebook group called “You Know You Grew Up in Alton When…” what was Reefer Street’s real name. Some replied Jersey or Crawford, while others claimed it was Maxey or Judson.
Finally, someone posted, “This was driving me crazy trying to decide which street it actually was so I took a drive there and it was Crawford.” The specific spot was “an old party place at the bottom of the hill on Maxi (sic)….Those were good times!!!”
Thanks to this new law, such good times will soon be legal. Every street in Alton now has the chance to become a Reefer Street.
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John J. Dunphy is the author of “Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois” and “Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials: The Investigative Work of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, 1945–
1947.”