MARIJUANA LAW SHOULD BE FIXED

The Illinois Chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana
Laws supports Cook County's efforts to ticket cannabis offenders, the
problem with the cannabis decriminalization ordinance is that it
allows the officers to use their discretion and can issue an arrest or
a ticket.

This will lead to cases of discriminatory arrests and a better policy
would be to simply issue the ticket and allow the officer to arrest
the subject only if they have a warrant or are breaking some other
law.

Cannabis should be legal and regulated like alcohol and tobacco and
until that happens ticketing cannabis offenders is much better than
arresting them, however so long as the market is still illegal
problems will occur. Until the underground market is brought above the
table and legal cannabis prohibition will bring about the same
problems that alcohol prohibition did.

Dan Linn

Executive Director

Illinois NORML