A City Council committee moved Tuesday to shut down open-air drug markets peddling marijuana in broad daylight near Chicago public schools and parks.
One week after Mayor Brandon Johnson’s progressive allies used a parliamentary maneuver to recess the Committee on Public Safety, Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) pushed a watered-down version of his stalled crackdown through on a voice vote, setting the stage for final Council approval next week.
Villegas cut the distance for his enhanced penalties in half — to within 1,000 feet of schools and parks — and offered a sliding scale of penalties to soften opposition from colleagues who feared a return to the days when African-Americans were disproportionately harmed by marijuana laws.
When the Illinois General Assembly legalized marijuana and turned it into a cash cow, Villegas said it all but invited drug dealers to set up shop near schools and parks to peddle cannabis on the black market to users eager to avoid sky-high taxes.
State lawmakers, perhaps inadvertently, made the problem worse by failing to include progressive discipline for illegal marijuana sales and punishing each offense with a citation that’s the equivalent of a parking ticket, Villegas said.
Enforcement was further hampered two years ago when the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the smell of burnt cannabis was no longer enough to establish probable cause for police to search a vehicle because possession of marijuana is now “presumptively lawful” in most cases.
“It’s not just happening in my ward. It’s occurring throughout the city. There’s multiple open-air drug markets that are specifically selling cannabis given the high taxes that the state of Illinois has imposed on this recreational drug,” Villegas told the Sun-Times.
“You created this black market where this illegal activity is occurring while the Chicago Police Department’s hands are tied,” Villegas added. “They pushed us into a corner here. We have to try and fill this void.”
Before the Bears stadium saga “took the oxygen out” of the spring session, Villegas said he was hoping state lawmakers would impose some form of progressive discipline against drug dealers operating with impunity near schools and parks.
“In Chicago, if you get multiple tickets for your vehicle, you get the boot. But if you get a citation for selling cannabis, you can get as many as possible” without additional penalties, he said. “All we’re saying is, put some guardrails around this so we’re not creating this black market which ultimately can spiral into heavy crime, and potentially killings, because someone’s trying to take over a profitable corner of a legal substance being sold illegally.”
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) argued that the state legislature “created a monster when they legalized marijuana” without considering what he called the “black market economics of the drug trade.”
Although Chicago can never eliminate black market drug sales, Lopez said, “Children going to the park trying to play a soccer game should not get a contact high simply because people are at the other end smoking weed like they’re reenacting a Cheech and Chong video.”
Last week, progressive alderpersons used a quorum call to recess the Committee on Public Safety before Villegas could call for a vote.
Anyone caught selling marijuana within 1,000 feet of a student safety zone, park or playground would face 100 hours of community service for the first offense or be required to participate in a “restorative justice program.” Repeat offenders would face fines as high as $20,000 and up to six months in jail.
Villegas said he softened the ordinance because he “heard my colleagues.” But he was still stung by the fact that Johnson’s allies had tried to derail the crackdown on open-air drug markets.
“Our office has been trying to work with this administration, but unfortunately they have this ideology around how this should be handled,” Villegas said. “I’ve explained to them that I’ve given you over two years to try and get some of the ideology you want implemented here. But it hasn’t been successful. At some point, we have to do something. Asking folks to please not sell cannabis was not working.”
