Deception reigns in cannabis industry

Your article, “As Illinois receives praise for its cannabis equity efforts, stakeholders still working on system’s flaws,” shows how faulty it is to promote marijuana businesses for equity. The purpose of the article is to promote medical marijuana and advocate for craft cannabis businesses to have easier access to selling medical marijuana. The multi-state companies will always have an advantage over craft growers and new players in the industry.

News Joint, a cannabis industry website, blogs about the struggles of growing the medical marijuana program. Advertisements — on the radio and on Patch —promote ways of getting qualified without seeing a doctor. Illinois keeps expanding medical marijuana by adding qualifying conditions. The most recent expansion includes conditions that cannabis can’t cure any more than a couple shots of whiskey can: endometriosis, ovarian cysts and uterine fibroids.

Illinois’ medical marijuana program is neither honest nor medical. The shame is that people may resort to medical cannabis rather than true remedies for their debilitating conditions.

The politicians who promised equity when they legalized marijuana were deceitful, because they gave first licenses to Illinois’ existing medical marijuana providers, large operators. If you follow the sales, it’s clear that marijuana sales aren’t going to grow much more. The deception continues. The cost of regulating the various sellers, growers and transporters washes out the benefit of tax money. We don’t want to be like California which spent $100 million to subsidize its cannabis industry.

Julie Schauer

Glen Ellyn