Legal weed’s first year in Chicago: High arrest rates for Black people, a boutique experience for others

Marijuana legalization has been a boyhood dream come true for Keith Fort, a recently retired stage manager for live events who said he’s glad Chicago finally joined the ranks of other weed-friendly cities he’s visited.

“Fifty years I’ve waited for legalization. I’m 66 years old,” he said.

Fort, a veteran of scores of music concerts and festivals, said he enjoys the variety and potency of products at his local dispensary, especially sweet now that he’s turned over his stage production management business to his son.

“When I first started smoking in Virginia in 1969, there was a young man who got 20 years in jail for possession for half a joint,” he said. “It made me leery for my entire life — I’ve been a criminal my entire life. As of January 1st last year, I am no longer a criminal.”

Legalization has begun to melt away decades of fears, said Fort, who had joined a demonstration against big-money dispensaries muscling out would-be minority owners outside the Sunnyside dispensary in Wrigleyville this week.

But on this new frontier, old problems lurk. What’s emerged in the year since legalization is a parallel world where some are able to enjoy marijuana without consequence, while others continue to suffer from the policies of the drug war era.

Three times the number of African Americans were arrested for marijuana-related offenses in Chicago than other ethnicities combined in 2020, according to Chicago Police Department arrest totals retrieved under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The arrest figures are only the latest sign of disparity in the state’s fledgling marijuana industry.

Critics point out what they see as a troubling double standard: At the same time the state’s legal weed industry is making millions and white smokers are enjoying the boutique experience with designer weed in clean, fashionable North Side dispensaries, Black and brown people are left out of the windfall and continue to be arrested for selling weed illegally.

During the first year of marijuana legalization, Black people led all ethnic groups in arrests with 2,311, making up more than three-quarters of all marijuana arrests in Chicago. Latinos made up the second highest number of arrests with 506.

Whites made up about 4% of arrests in Chicago, with 117 arrests across the city for the entire year. Asians and Pacific Islanders made up fewer than 1% with just 25 arrests.

“You still incarcerate us at a higher rate than anyone for the same product you just made legal, and allow white men to set up drug houses in every suburb (and) town, and lock us up and kick our doors in for the same product,” said Tyrone F. Muhammad, executive director of Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change.

The arrests don’t represent people smoking pot on the sidewalk or inside their homes. Most arrests involve possessing or attempting to sell amounts over the legal limit of 30 grams. Smoking marijuana while driving remains illegal.

Last year’s arrest numbers aren’t a total surprise to critics who have long decried Chicago’s use of so-called broken windows policing, where officers target minor crime in poor communities to disrupt violence related to gangs and drugs. Instead of capturing instigators of violence, such policies end up targeting nonviolent drug offenders and small-time dealers, detractors say.

Among the critics is Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, a longtime proponent of decriminalization who said the numbers suggest improper use of police resources instead of solving root causes.

“The fact that we have these disparities in terms of access, and then on top of that, we’re seeing a continued criminalization of people for actions that are largely driven by their inability to go and buy them on the legal market, is disheartening and frustrating and demonstrative of the work that still needs to be done,” Foxx said.

In a statement, a spokesman for police Superintendent David Brown said the department “does not tolerate racial discrimination of any kind and is committed to constitutional policing and treating all individuals with dignity and respect. The Department conducts enforcement based on criminal activity, not based on race or specific communities.”

‘Living in this Cold War’

Norman Kyle Futrell, 33, an African American metal sculpture artist who recently returned to Chicago’s South Side from Oakland, California, said legalization in Chicago looks like the Dark Ages compared with the Bay Area, where the growth and cultivation industries have boomed in the past decade and dispensaries are more convenience stores.

“I know that it’s legal here, but it doesn’t feel like it,” he recently told the Tribune. “In the Bay Area, cops don’t bat an eyelash over weed, while (in Illinois) you’re all still living in this Cold War where, if they smell it on you, they can take you in. Meanwhile, white people are having just the time of their lives.”

Futrell, who worked as a costume designer and performer at a circus in San Francisco, said his fear of arrest for public smoking quickly eased while living there. But that twinge of fear has partially returned, mostly because the Black residents who he smokes socially with here remain fearful of law enforcement.

Because of marijuana’s longtime vilified image in Chicago, fears persist in neighborhoods, where weed is still a trigger for detainment. Relations between Chicago police and communities of color remain strained from past high-profile incidents, from Laquan McDonald’s fatal shooting to the wrongly raided house of Anjanette Young and the recent shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by police.

“I do not think I can smoke here without being hassled because everyone here is paranoid about it. I’m reminded about it here,” Futrell said.

Outside the Mission dispensary on South Commercial Avenue, one of a few South Side weederies, a steady stream of customers, Black and Latino, young adults and older adults, passed by. A 45-year-old African American woman waiting in her vehicle for her husband to finish his purchase said she remains suspicious as long as marijuana remains illegal federally.

“I’m not comfortable with it. They can switch it at any time,” said the woman, who did not want to give her name because of her concerns about authorities.

“For me, if you’re going to legalize something, do it all across the board. Don’t do this — don’t split hairs. If the federal government comes in, what are you going to say to people? Everybody on they list (is) going to prison.”

Foxx, who pushed for mass expungements for past drug felonies, said her office is ready to resume the proceedings after a pause because of the pandemic.

“Even as we saw dispensaries open up and accessibility, it is much like many things in this city, Black communities were left out,” she said. “The ability to go to your local dispensary doesn’t exist in the same neighborhoods where people want to use or were using before.”

Legalization has meant that arrest numbers overall are well below previous years when tens of thousands of people were charged annually.

But the 10 police districts with the most marijuana arrests in the city are majority Black and Latino, while districts with large white populations have the fewest arrests.

The Gresham police district, which covers the Auburn and Gresham neighborhoods on the South Side, led the entire city in marijuana-related arrests in 2020, with 351 arrests. The Lincoln District on the North Side, which covers Edgewater over to the North Branch of the Chicago River, had the fewest arrests with 11.

Foxx said the numbers reflect old patterns of policing that are ineffective. She said she remains troubled by the racial disparity as older studies have shown similar use rates between Blacks and whites.

“The fact is the whole point of legalization, and obviously decriminalization, was to deal with the reality, which was people use marijuana across racial and ethnic demographics at the same rate. Yet there was an overrepresentation of Black people in the justice system,” she said.

In response to escalating gun violence, Chicago police for years have relied on traffic stops to seize thousands of illegal guns. In many cases, police use the smell of burning cannabis to initiate traffic stops that can turn up contraband.

A previous American Civil Liberties Union analysis found that white motorists in Illinois were found with a higher percentage of contraband, despite being pulled over less.

The ACLU found that Illinois had the third-highest racial disparity in marijuana possession arrests among states, with Black people 7.5 times more likely than white people to be arrested.

“This data is disappointing, but not surprising,” ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said in a release. “Black people remain the targets of arrests for cannabis in Chicago, even after the State changed the law, reflecting the same discriminatory enforcement pattern we see for all drug laws.

Big money behind local dispensaries

At the Windy City Cannabis’ trendy and punny Weed Street location in Goose Island, customers arriving by bicycle or sports car have their IDs quickly scanned at the door and are brought inside to order a dizzying array of whimsically named plant buds, vape cartridges and edibles.

“As of right now, I think we’re (Chicago) doing fine. Hopefully the taxes will go down soon,” a ponytailed 21-year-old buyer who moved to the city’s North Side from Indiana said on the sidewalk next to the dispensary. “The flow of everything is going good right now. They have everybody in and out (of the dispensary) fast,” said the woman, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons.

The first cold day of legal marijuana brought long lines across the city, strict rules for purchases at the storefront dispensaries and product shortages. Then COVID-19 hit, and thousands of jobs across the region were lost in the ensuing months as everyone was told to stay home.

One year and a billion dollars in sales later, dispensary managers who spoke with the Tribune said medical and recreational business was booming, largely due to massive community outreach. Though slowed by the product shortage, staff soothed antsy buyers with variety, while reassuring neighbors that recreational dispensaries wouldn’t upend neighborhoods or draw crime.

The new recreational storefronts across the city’s North Side, with their inviting bright colors and vivid lettering, and the ever-present green leaf, are part of larger nationwide dispensary corporate chains that have exploded since America started legalizing pot nearly a decade ago. Windy City Cannabis, for example, was recently purchased by the multistate Curaleaf dispensary empire for $830 million.

Since returning to Chicago, Futrell has opted for trusted street dealers and the occasional random peddler for his weed.

Private sellers help him avoid the host of taxes and surcharges that come with shopping at local dispensaries, while putting money into the pocket of someone from his neighborhood.

“Here in Chicago, it’s brand new and everything costs a kazillion dollars if you’re going to go to a dispensary,” Futrell said. “There’s a lot of people that have a dedicated weed man who can deliver to them or you can get (the product) at their house.

Still, the legal industry is growing rapidly. Last month, Illinois set a record with $109 million in sales of recreational marijuana, a 35% increase from the previous month.

But so far, the city has no minority-owned dispensaries, and felons are barred from working within the industry.

Some dispensary chains have hired local managers to better work with regular customers and the community.

LizMarie Palomo, general manager of the Columbia Care dispensary in Jefferson Park — a bungalow-belt neighborhood full of city workers including many police officers — said some early anxieties were eased as she and her staff answered questions by curious but cautious neighbors.

“A lot of people were scared, a lot were concerned, especially with adult (recreational) use of things because they can’t get a medical card, or they may be working in a profession that won’t allow them to do so ... but more people are familiarized with the program,” Palomo told the Tribune in a Zoom interview.

At the Mission dispensary in the South Chicago neighborhood, general manager Rebecca Gonzalez said she and her staff have done extensive community outreach during the pandemic, including hosting food drives and fundraisers to help connect with area residents.

Gonzalez said she knows the cost likely scares some away. “That’s definitely one of the biggest hindrances, that taxes are very high,” Gonzalez said.

But the trade-off, she said, is some people are willing to pay more for the variety of products they sell. “People love the idea of being able to know exactly what they’re getting, perfectly dosed edibles versus, ‘I don’t know how many milligrams are in this one.’”

Both Palomo and Gonzalez are natives to the region and Latina executives who hear the voices of women and Blacks and Latinos feeling locked out of the industry and hope to expand the playing field for women of color like themselves.

Said Palomo: “Black and brown women are just fighting for a seat at the table.”

Muhammad’s group has staged protests for equity issues in the local marijuana industry, the most recent one outside the Sunnyside order center on Clark Street on Monday. Sunnyside is owned by Cresco Labs, which has 10 dispensaries throughout the state.

Muhammad compared the takeover of legal pot to the corporate takeover of alcohol following the end of Prohibition and the creation of state lottery jackpots based on the old three-digit “policy” gambling run by Black people.

“Weed has been for decades a hustle for Black communities. That’s why the cannabis industry, lobbyists and legislators made it legal,” he said. “The problem becomes when you make white men legal drug dealers ... then you lock us out of the same process.”

During the protest, a Rogers Park woman entering the dispensary said she smokes marijuana to treat her anxiety and feels no fear of being arrested.

“I look this way, which makes a big difference,” she said referring to her appearance as a white woman despite being of Hispanic and Jewish heritage. “It’s an astounding privilege. It’s intense. It’s a lot to reconcile with.”

The 35-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified because she is a teacher and therapist, said she may reconsider shopping at mainstream dispensaries

“We were promised legalization under the guise that there would be some sort of these socially just reparations, and that’s not happening and that’s not fair,” she said. “Part of the reason I was so jazzed to support legal weed because they were funds that were supposed to go back into the community.”

The woman left without making a purchase.

‘Language with no repair’

In Baltimore, the district attorney’s recent decision to decriminalize all drug arrests is a “blueprint” for shifting resources away from drugs and toward violence, Foxx said.

“I think there is room to recognize that in order to do this, we should probably loosen our resources on nonviolent offenses, like marijuana, to devote our attention to (violent crime).”

There is also much work to be done on the political front, activists say.

Muhammad said it’s time for political leaders to open up the corporate marijuana industry to people of color after decades of laws that targeted them for arrest and prosecution.

“Until you deal with reparations and expungement — without reparations, it means nothing. It’s just language with no repair, no reparations for the damage done by the war on drugs.”

For Fort, the world was a very different place when he first arrived in Lakeview in 1975. He easily remembers when law enforcement dealt harshly with marijuana users and dealers, even for a small amount.

Now, he agrees that parity could go a long way to repairing some of the damage of the drug war.

“I think the distributed income model of the black market was actually healthier for the community, except that it resulted in incarceration. Those folks should have never been incarcerated,” Fort said.

“They should be out, and they should be running these shops.”