Title:
Medical marijuana not called in Illinois House
Message:
Unfortunately,
the Illinois House of Representatives did not take up SB 1381 last night, and
the session has been adjourned. That means the bill is officially dead, and
we’ll be starting all over with the new legislature being sworn in today. As
you may have heard, a bill to raise income taxes and various other measures
designed to address budget shortfalls were also on the calendar, and since SB
1381 had already received two votes, these other bills were given higher
priority.
This
is incredibly frustrating news, but the fact remains that this is as close as we
have ever come to passing medical marijuana legislation in Illinois and there
are plenty of reasons for optimism. For example, we were able to nearly double
our support among Republicans in just one month without the ability to
negotiate on changes to the bill.
Despite
the outcome, I want thank everyone for their calls, letters, and other efforts
in getting us to this point. I would also like to thank Al Sharp and Walter
Boyd from Protestants for the Common
Good, our allies at Firedoglake and LEAP, and the entire staff of MPP
for all their efforts. Most of all, our sincere appreciation goes out to the
dozens of patients throughout Illinois who fought tirelessly in support of the
bill. It’s inspirational to see patients with multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS,
and debilitating pain travel to Springfield time and time again and walk the
halls of the Capitol for hours sharing their stories with legislators. They are the reason we will pass medical marijuana legislation
in Illinois.
Thanks
again, now let’s get back to work.
