In January Gov. Bruce Rauner gave several medical marijuana dispensary owners the go-ahead to open retail locations, allowing medical marijuana patients to get access to their medicine a year after the treatment was legalized in Illinois. But Kirsten Velasco, a medical cannabis patient advocate, says that Illinois' medical marijuana law has a serious flaw: It requires patients to be fingerprinted, a practice she says she is "sure" is "a violation of civil rights and privacy."
Velasco writes:
This was protested at public forums, but ultimately it was left in the law as a compromise to get the program started.
If the media could bring Gov. Rauner's attention to this violation, maybe he has the means to amend the law internally. Otherwise the burden would be on an individual to fill a lawsuit against the state, which would be a horrible time and financial burden.
This element of the law is even more aggravating when we know that full decriminalization is an inevitability.
(See what three civil rights violations Velasco believes this fingerprinting provision specifically violates at Reboot Illinois.)
Issues with the medical marijuana law are not the only serious flaws many Illinoisans see in their political systems. Two Illinoisans, John Kraft and Kirk Allen, call themselves the Edgar County Watchdogs and have made it their mission to sniff out these serious issues and bring them to light.
(At Reboot Illinois find out what local problems the watchdogs have found, including the sale of illegal guns at county sheriff departments and fraudulent federal grant applications.)
