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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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In Illinois, you can grow up to five plants for personal use if you have a medical card. However, medical cards in Illinois are only provided to people who suffer from a condition on a fairly limited list. Definitely not as easy to get a medical card here as it is in, say, California.
If you don't have a medical card, and you're caught with up to five plants, it's a "violation" (citation), with a maximum fine of $200 and no jail time. Over five plants is a felony, with increasingly higher jail and fines. Read between the lines here, and they're not going to be looking for people with up to five plants for personal use at all.
These penalties exist in order to prevent trafficking, which I think is a good thing. Legal weed in Illinois is not terribly expensive, and you can have confidence in the quality, that it's not adulterated, and that the money you spend on it isn't filtering down to criminal organizations.
All your arguments would apply to apples or spinach too, yet I can grow apples and give them to my neighbor. Laws mostly exist to protect in-groups and oppress out-groups. Having laws against something enjoyed by the out group enables all sorts of harassment, imprisonment, excuses for violence, etc. It doesn't matter that the laws technically apply to the in-group, they will not be enforced against privileged people.
You left out the remainder of the context:
Marijuana has been illegal at the state level in Illinois since 1931, and federally since 1937 (where, as we all know, it still is). Because of its history of illegality, a large black market has existed, and the operators of that black market are surely still active.
Apples and spinach have never been illegal, for anyone of any age in any amount. There has not been a 90+ year old black market for apples or spinach.
I agree, which is why I am quite happy that recreational marijuana is legal in Illinois, and so many other states.
So then they are just trying to kill competition then at best. The black market exists to fill a need the lit market isn't. Legalizing dispensaries (and having sane taxes) and growing would essentially eliminate the local cannabis black market or reduce it to a negligible size.
Why have laws against trafficking something like weed? Just because something was illegal long ago should we continue to make like difficult for it's users?
Which is exactly what is happening. That black market doesn't dissolve immediately. The previous long term illegality gave it deep roots. As above, five plants with a medical card is fully legal in Illinois. Five plants without a medical card is a $200 maximum fine with no jail time, which is decriminalization.
I'm not even sure what you're arguing about at this point.
Not sure what point you are making it either.
If the punishment for breaking a law is a FINE then it is only illegal for the poor.
You're not wrong, but nobody in Illinois is going to raid your house because you have five plants for personal use.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
why limit the 5 to medical cards which also require a yearly fee. My wife has a bunch of issues and could likely get a card but we don't know if marijuana would help but we would love to try to see if it would allow for less use of opoids and nausea medicine. Its not covered by insurance though and we already pay max out of pocket each year so the paywall is just to much.
Well, if you want to try, just go buy some. If your wife has an opioid prescription, you can get a medical card, but to my understanding, it just makes the price of the products lower, and lets you buy a larger quantity. There may be some products which are only available to medical card holders, but if there are, there aren't many.
Like I said, even without a medical card, up to five plants is a $200 fine. With the electricity and effort and equipment, it's probably going to cost you less for better quality if you just buy from a shop and let the professionals do the growing (unless you're one of those professionals, of course).
so I don't think you understand. We spend a lot on medical already and marijuana without a card is very expensive and we just don't break the law because we think we can. If the law just allowed grow then we would likely try it. Just fyi the amount of doctors who other folks who have no concept of our single income barely making it world who say, hey just buy this thing out of pocket. Drives me nuts. I understand that you don't necessarily understand my situation but we actually do in some case spend some additional out of pocket but it is very economically challenging for us. Case in point is insurance will not cover prp which we have found works but will cover another surgery. So its like a game of chicken. The surgery would cost the insurance waaaaayyy more than prp but its also does not always end well as we well know. Another case was they use to pay for this post surgery machine that automatically runs cold/hot cycles and preassure which is clinically proven to improve outcomes and they used to cover it. Know why they don't now. Medicare stopped and most insurances use medicare billing codes. So they stopped. Anwyay we do not have unlimited resources to pay for unlimited amounts of out of pocket with medical costs.