Crains Document Where Illinois Cannabis Tax Revenues Will Go

Under the long-awaited legalization bill unveiled May 7, just 35 percent of cannabis taxes will go to the state’s general fund, and 10 percent will go to a separate budget stabilization fund. Report Crain’s Chicago Business

Here’s how things will be divided up

Another 25 percent will go to a grant program that aims to help communities hit hard by poverty, violence and the war on drugs; and 20 percent will go to mental health and substance-abuse treatment. The other 10 percent goes to law enforcement and drug-treatment education.

Even if legal pot eventually generates the $440 million to $676 million in annual taxes predicted by legislators sponsoring the bill, far less would be available to shrink chronic multibillion-dollar state budget deficits or fill the yawning pension gap.

“It’s not going to generate as much (revenue) as you’d think,” says Fred Giertz, a tax expert at the department of economics and Institute of Government & Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The 522-page bill has something for everyone: legalization of recreational pot use, increased funding for social service programs, expungement of criminal records for marijuana possession and economic development help for poor communities. These provisions are likely to draw support from legislators representing districts where strict enforcement of marijuana laws has taken a heavy toll. But those same extras could turn rural and suburban lawmakers against the bill.

House Speaker Michael Madigan, who has been counting noses longer than anyone in Springfield, recently telegraphed doubt about the bill’s prospects. “There are some very controversial aspects to the proposal,” he told a class of student journalists on the day the weed bill was filed in the Senate. “No. 1 would be the proposal for the expungement of criminal records. . . .How far do you go?”

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