Opinion

Marijuana law should be fixed

Posted August 02, 2009 11:00 pm

The Illinois Chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws supports Cook County's efforts to ticket cannabis offenders, the problem with the cannabis decriminalization ordinance is that it allows the officers to use their discretion and can issue an arrest or a ticket.

This will lead to cases of discriminatory arrests and a better policy would be to simply issue the ticket and allow the officer to arrest the subject only if they have a warrant or are breaking some other law.

Cannabis should be legal and regulated like alcohol and tobacco and until that happens ticketing cannabis offenders is much better than arresting them, however so long as the market is still illegal problems will occur. Until the underground market is brought above the table and legal cannabis prohibition will bring about the same problems that alcohol prohibition did.

Dan Linn

Executive Director

Illinois NORML

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