Ward

PoliticalUpdate23h ago

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.

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