IFI strongly opposes this bill for the following reasons:

• The underground black-market will grow. In Colorado, where home grows are legal, the black-market operates in plain sight by buying and gutting large suburban homes and growing thousands of plants worth millions. In 2020, Colorado Drug Task Forces made 168 felony arrests and seized 5.54 tons of black-market marijuana (86,502 plants) that was heading to 21 different states. The money was being laundered through restaurants by multiple Chinese drug trafficking organizations. Because it is such an enormous problem, the Illicit Market Marijuana Team has been created within the Colorado Bureau of Investigations. 
• “Grow your own pot” will create the neighborhood “gray market,” offering marijuana cheaper than retail stores as a result of not being taxed and little or no overhead.
• Home grows will provide easier access to adolescents and teens.
• Home grows will be impossible to control and regulate.
• How will the State ensure only 5 plants per home?
• Home grows will likely result in more marijuana-related calls to the Illinois Poison Center. According to Dr. Michael Wahl, medical director of the poison center, almost all poison exposures involving edibles were unintentional. “People didn’t mean to eat them, or didn’t know what they were eating.”
  • 2019 – 487 calls (80 from edibles)
  • 2020 – 743 calls
  • 2021 – 855 calls (450 from edibles)
     

Urge your state representative to vote NO on HB 4799.