Mayor, Experts Talk Cannabis At Bolingbrook Meeting

BOLINGBROOK, IL — With cannabis now legal in Illinois, many Bolingbrook residents have been wondering whether they will soon see a dispensary pop up in the village.

To help answer villagers' questions, Mayor Mary Alexander-Basta held a roundtable "Community Matters" meeting Tuesday morning with cannabis, public health and legal experts.

Included were Steve Chirico, mayor of Naperville; Dr. Damon Arnold, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health; Lauren DaValle, member of the law office that serves as Naperville's attorneys; and Kelan and Trak Patel, who have worked in the cannabis industry for years.

Here is a recap of that Q&A, edited for clarity:

Q: What preventive measures are taken to keep residents and consumers safe in towns that have allowed the sale of cannabis?

Chirico: The big initial part of it was making sure that it was set up correctly. A lot of that was about land use, zoning, hours of operation, and then, of course, simple things like traffic concerns and parking. Making sure that the ordinances are crafted correctly was a big part of the success, at least in our case, of the program.

Q: What are the health risks of using cannabis? Are there any that you've seen?

Arnold: We do know it can cause problems with your ability to think, short-term memory, also lane changes with driving – some people will wander more with taking marijuana – and also reaction time, so your psychomotor skills. There has been an association of a 2 to 3 fold increased risk of using cannabis with driving. But if you start looking at the issues of alcohol, it's about 8 to 9 times the risk. So what we're really worried about with your bodily reactions to marijuana is, what other substances are on board? What is it that you're actually smoking? Having some regulation of it may be a better way to go, rather than having it sold on the streets, where people are adding additives and they're putting chemicals in there that can give you some side effects that are much worse than what you would get from somebody at a dispensary who is controlling what this thing is that you are buying.

Q: We know that cannabis is legal, but what exactly does that mean? Are there certain limitations and consumption rules?

LaValle: There are. For example, Bolingbrook passed an ordinance last year that amends their current police code to account for the cannabis tax act. So what that means is basically, while cannabis is legal, it doesn't mean that people can use cannabis in public. Minors are strictly prohibited from using cannabis, buying cannabis. There are certain places where people cannot use cannabis or possess cannabis, such as school buses, schools, correctional facilities, child care facilities, as well as a motor vehicle. You can possess cannabis in a motor vehicle, but it has to be in a sealed container. Another place you're not allowed to use cannabis is a "public place." That's kind of a broad term, and I think Illinois law enforcement is trying to figure out exactly what that means. You also cannot smoke cannabis anywhere where you can’t smoke cigarettes.

Q: What are the differences between a cultivation center and a dispensary?

Kelan Patel: A cultivation center is more or less a "very secure greenhouse." The average size for Illinois is about 40,000-50,000 square feet currently. As far as security, we have a 50-page security plan. It’s gonna be secure 24/7 365. In terms of a dispensary, the best way to explain that is maybe like a Walgreens or CVS where patients with cards can come in and purchase what they need for medical cannabis.

Trak Patel: For a dispensary, there’s limitations on how much you can purchase by state law for every visit. Whereas with cultivation, it's a "craft grow." So what we have the license for in Illinois, we're limited to only 5,000 square feet of growth in our initial plan. The security is probably one of the tightest that we can have. Illinois is very strict when it comes to security. All of the facilities will be tied to the state police, so they have full capability of monitoring all of our cameras and the ability to view. It's probably one of the most secure places you can go. Same thing with dispensaries; it's very secure because of all the regulations and the requirements: 24/7 security guard at the dispensary, entry-level cameras all over. Everything is driven by key cards and badges, so not just anybody can go into any facility.

Q: How did Naperville go from deciding "no" on having a dispensary to deciding "yes"?

Chirico: It just seemed as a practical matter that, once it became legal in the state of Illinois, and it could be used in Naperville and every other city, it made no sense to force people who wanted to purchase legal cannabis to do so in areas outside of our city. So it was a practical matter for me. For others, I think they had to be convinced that it could be done safely. Ultimately, to get enough votes in the air in our city, we did have to go through a referendum. The referendum passed narrowly, 53 percent, but it did pass. Once you have the will of the residents on your side, it does make the process quite a bit easier.

Q: Tell me about the revenue generated.

Chirico: The state doesn't tell us on any industry what sales are in the private sector, so we don't know what cannabis facilities' sales are. But what we can do is we can back into these numbers. When you do that, it's about $2 million per year in municipal sales tax revenue. And just to put that into perspective, our entire downtown business district brings in about $1.7 million in retail sales tax. So that's a big deal, when you can add that many new revenue dollars to the revenue stream.

Q: Is it possible to become addicted to cannabis?

Arnold: Yes. In general, they're saying about 9 to 30 percent of people who use cannabis have the potential of becoming addicted, especially people who are under 19 years old, who have a 4 to 7 fold increase in the potential of having some form of addition. Withdrawal, though, is usually very mild if the person goes to behavioral therapy. Currently, there are no medications that we can give to treat addiction to cannabis, so it's really more behavioral therapy.

A recording of the full meeting can be found below.