Is recreational marijuana a missed opportunity in Edwardsville?

The closest marijuana dispensary is Ascend Cannabis Dispensary in Collinsville.

Just to start a dispensary, those interested first have to go through the licensing phase, which is based on a lottery system. At random, applicants are chosen for a specific area in the state, but can’t choose the area they desire.

The $5,000 dispensary application fee is non-refundable, and there is a $60,000 licensing fee for a two-year license.

For example, the owners of 3D Vapor in Edwardsville were granted permission by the state to open a dispensary, but they were permitted to start the business in an area multiple hours north of Edwardsville. The owners asked not to be identified. 

Having lived in Edwardsville their entire lives, the owners wanted to stay in the area, so their vape shop is just that: a vape shop.

The current Edwardsville regulations take in to account the distance from dwelling units. A commercial district facility can’t be within 250 feet of a property line of a property zoned for residential use and can’t be within 1,500 feet of an existing school.

However, the zoning regulations do permit a dispensary in business districts.

According to Edwardsville economic and community development director James Arnold, the city has received several calls since last summer, when the state did another license poll and awarded three licenses to this region of southern Illinois.

Since then, there hasn’t been much movement on licenses, as they were held in litigation until this March, when Illinois won a court order to award 60 new cannabis growing licenses. Prior to this, there were 110 licenses in Illinois.

When Illinois became the 11th state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana on Jan. 1, 2020, Governor J.B. Pritzker claimed that taxation of marijuana could generate nearly $1 billion a year in taxes.

After two years, Illinois seems to be on the right path for that figure.

In 2021, it was reported that Illinois recreational marijuana sales reached $1.38 billion, which doubled the total from 2020. The taxes collected from those 2021 sales totaled about $387 million, compared to $291 million in taxes from liquor sales.

Of those collected taxes, 35 percent gets put into the General Revenue Fund, 25 percent into the Restore, Reinvest, and Renew program, 20 percent goes into substance abuse and prevention efforts and mental health concerns, 10 percent into the Budget Stabilization Fund and eight percent into the Local Government Distributive Fund.

The General Revenue Fund mainly spends on education, healthcare, human services and public safety.

Restore, Reinvest and Renew, was a program that started alongside the marijuana legalization, and uses its spending on providing disadvantaged people with services, such as legal aid, youth development, community reentry and financial support.

Established in 1969, the Local Government Distributive Fund allots a percentage of the fund to the different municipalities in the state, based on a per capita basis. State income tax revenues are also included in this fund.