What if I operate a lot of heavy machinery or Apple products for my job—am I still allowed to be a cannabis patient? Or what if my boss administers regular drug tests?
For starters, as the law reiterates, no one should use dangerous equipment or drive a vehicle while impaired.
That said, the law is somewhat muddled in its approach to workplace standards. On the one hand, it bans employers—along with schools and landlords—from discriminating against anyone simply for being a medical marijuana patient.
On the other, it allows employers to implement drug testing or “zero-tolerance” policies, and to crack down on anyone who violates them.
“Even if a patient only uses cannabis at home before they go to bed, they’re still going to have it in their blood and would fail a zero-tolerance policy,” notes Berlin, the attorney and advocate. “Patients will have to find employers who can tolerate this, and over time employers will have to adjust.”
I have a friend—let’s call him “Ganja Jones”—who likes to grow his own. If he’s a qualifying patient, can he fill his own prescription under the law?
Not in Illinois. Fourteen states allow registered patients or their caregivers to grow on their property, with limits ranging from six plants in Alaska and Colorado to 24 in Oregon. But recently passed laws are more restrictive, and that includes the one in Illinois.
“When I first took this issue on, a bill had passed the Illinois Senate that had grow-your-own in it,” says Lang. “I could not pass that in the House.”
So only the dispensaries are permitted to grow medical marijuana?
No—the dispensaries aren’t allowed to grow it either.
Huh. Something tells me that if they’re going to dispense cannabis, they need to get it from somewhere.
It’s true—the law allows for up to 22 cultivation centers, licensed by the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Why 22? Why not a nice round number like 23, or 52?
Illinois has 22 state police districts.
What does that have to do with cultivating cannabis?
Some legislators worried about the marijuana supply growing out of control. To ease their concerns, the law was amended to make it easy for state police to monitor cultivation facilities—so one per police district.
Will 22 grow centers be able to produce enough cannabis for the entire state?
That too is a subject of debate, but based on what’s happened in other states, most analysts believe they will. The important thing, they say, is to ensure that those in need of cannabis have plenty of options to choose from. For instance, some don’t want marijuana with a high level of THC, the psychoactive chemical.
“I don’t need to be recreationally zoned out on my couch eating Cheetos,” says Falco, the MS patient. She wants to be able to “go into a dispensary and find different combinations—this is good for insomnia, this is good for spasticity.”