Leading Ill. governor candidates indicate support for medical cannabis reform

Illinois’s gubernatorial primaries will be held on Tuesday, February 2, and the two major-party front-runners have indicated that they support medical cannabis reform.

Please carefully consider the candidate’s position on protecting patients before casting your vote. You may even want to consider volunteering for or donating to compassionate candidates.

In response to an Associated Press questionnaire, former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, the leading Republican candidate and himself a cancer survivor, said he could support a "narrowly drawn" bill giving patients access to medical marijuana. "It can provide needed relief for patients with various afflictions," Ryan said.

For his part, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn said he would consider signing a medical marijuana bill. "In general, I believe that people who are seriously ill deserve access to all medical treatments that will help them," he said.

Among the Republican candidates, Bill Brady voted against medical cannabis in the state Senate last year. Other Republican candidates who support medical marijuana reform are Adam Andrzejewski and Dan Proft. Gov. Quinn’s Democratic challenger, Comptroller Dan Hynes, dodged the question and said he opposes legalizing marijuana.  One of his spokesmen, however, has clarified that Hynes opposes legal access to medical marijuana as well. You can read more about the candidates’ stances here.

Several House and Senate candidates also have primary races on Feb. 2. You can find out how your senator voted on medical cannabis here and whether your House member co-sponsors medical cannabis here.

The Illinois House of Representatives began the second half of its 2009-2010 session on Wednesday, and one of the items on this year’s legislative agenda is SB 1381, the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act. But no matter how we do in the legislature, we will need support in the governor’s office to make this bill into law. It’s therefore vitally important that the next governor Illinois elects supports giving patients legal access to the medicine that they need.

Please vote on February 2 and encourage your friends and family to do the same by passing this alert on to them.

Thank you for supporting the Marijuana Policy Project and our efforts to make Illinois the 15th state to protect medical cannabis patients from arrest and prosecution.