Politics

Illinois’ dying, disabled prisoners kept jailed despite new law

Published

2 years ago

September 1, 2023

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This story was reported in collaboration with Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom. Subscribe to Injustice Watch’s newsletter for stories about equity and justice in the court system.

Phillip Merritt’s dementia is so advanced he’s lost the ability to speak. But with the help of his cellmates at Western Illinois Correctional Center, the 71-year-old still manages to get on the phone with his brother every few weeks.

“He has to have someone call me, and then I don’t know what to say to him because he can’t understand anything, so I’ll just talk,” said Merritt’s brother, Michael, in an interview. “All he can say are two words. … I mean, he’s just gone.”

Merritt’s deteriorating condition makes him a prime candidate to get out of prison under the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act, a pivotal criminal justice reform bill touted by Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois Democrats as an effective way to alleviate the state’s decrepit prison health care system, reduce the “staggering” costs of caring for ailing people in prison, and reunite families with frail loved ones.

Under the act — named after a decorated Army veteran who died of prostate cancer while incarcerated — Illinois prisoners can request early release if they’re terminally ill and expected to die within 18 months or if they’re medically incapacitated and need help with more than one activity of daily living, such as eating or using the bathroom.

But a year-and-a-half since the Coleman Act went into effect, an investigation by Injustice Watch and WBEZ found far fewer prisoners have been released under the law than expected, as the medical release process has become mired in the charged politics of criminal justice reform in the post-George Floyd era.

Behind the lower-than-expected numbers is the Prisoner Review Board, a state body appointed by Pritzker and confirmed by the Illinois Senate with final say on medical release requests.

As of mid-August, the board had denied nearly two-thirds of medical release requests from dying and disabled prisoners who met the medical criteria to get out of prison under the Coleman Act — including Merritt.

“I couldn’t believe it,” his brother said. “How could they deny him? He can’t even talk!”

More than half of the 94 denied applicants were older than age 60, and half had spent at least 15 years behind bars, according to an analysis of state prison data. At least two died in prison, including an 81-year-old who had been incarcerated for more than three decades and was scheduled to be released in 2025. Another man died five days before the board denied his request.

Meanwhile, the Prisoner Review Board has only granted 52 medical releases — a rate of fewer than three releases per month on average since board members began voting on those requests, records show.

Jennifer Soble, founder and executive director of the Illinois Prison Project, poses for a portrait at her downtown Chicago office.

Advocates say the board is undermining the Coleman Act and forcing ill-equipped prison staff to care for dying and disabled prisoners, even those with families practically begging to take them off their hands.

“Our prison system is now completely overburdened by people who pose absolutely no risk to public safety but are tremendously expensive to care for,” said Jennifer Soble, lead author of the Coleman Act and executive director of the Illinois Prison Project, a nonprofit legal group that represents dozens of medical release applicants.

“From a cost-saving perspective, from a government-efficiency perspective, and truly from a moral perspective, we need to be doing something differently here,” she said.

Donald Shelton, chair of the Prisoner Review Board, declined an interview request, but he defended the board’s record on medical release requests in an email sent through a spokesperson.
“Each case that comes before the board comes with its own set of circumstances to be studied and evaluated by members,” he wrote. “Due diligence is given by the board to every person who sets a petition before them.”

More medical releases could save taxpayers millions

It’s unclear exactly how many of Illinois’ nearly 30,000 prisoners could qualify for medical release. Under the Coleman Act, the Illinois Department of Corrections is required to keep track of that number, but department officials said they don’t have it yet. A department spokesperson said the data would be published by year’s end.

What is clear, from years of scathing reports from an independent monitor appointed by a federal judge, is Illinois prisons are unfit to provide health care for the thousands of aging, disabled and incapacitated prisoners.

Half of the state’s prison medical staff jobs are currently vacant. Prisoners with mobility issues suffer bed sores and frequent falls because no one is around to care for them. Some are even left sitting in their own waste, according to the monitor’s reports.

“Prescriptions go unrenewed, cancers go undiagnosed. In the worst cases, as everyone here knows, people die painful deaths because of the lack of care,” attorney Camille Bennett with the ACLU of Illinois said at a recent hearing on health care in state prisons.

Even this substandard care is expensive. Illinois paid $250 million last fiscal year to Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit company contracted to provide health care to state prisoners, according to state records.

Wexford’s 10-year contract expired in 2021, but the company continues providing care as Illinois seeks new bidders. Releasing more people under the Coleman Act could bring down the long-term cost of prison health care, said Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, a legal clinic in Chicago whose lawsuits against the state led to the appointment of the independent monitor.

“The more prisoners there are who are medically needy, the higher the cost of caring for them, and the higher the bids will be,” Mills said.

Brian Rich

Chicago Sun-TimesAlan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center

Conversely, if the Prisoner Review Board approved more medical releases, the cost savings for taxpayers in the long term could be in the millions, Mills said.

Daniel Conn, chief executive of Wexford Health Sources, did not respond to an interview request. LaToya Hughes, acting director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, declined to comment.

There are other, more immediate savings for Illinois taxpayers if more ailing prisoners were released, Mills said.

A recent government report showed Illinois spends more than $76,000 on average to incarcerate a single person for a year. Experts say terminally ill and incapacitated prisoners are much more expensive to care for. Prisoners whose medical needs can’t be met in prison infirmaries are escorted to and from hospitals by guards. With prisons short-staffed, officers already routinely require overtime pay.

By refusing to release more ailing prisoners, the Prisoner Review Board is also making it harder for prison medical staff to care for everyone else, Mills said.

“What limited resources we have are being devoted to people who are most seriously mentally or physically ill, and that doesn’t leave any health care for anybody else at all,” he said.

At the same time, the overburdened health care system is also blocking more prisoners from getting out under the Coleman Act.

Prisoners must be found qualified for medical release by a prison doctor or nurse before the board votes on their case. But prisoners often wait weeks or months to know whether they’ll qualify, records show. In one case, a prisoner at Illinois River Correctional Center waited 152 days before finding out he didn’t qualify for release, records show.

Prison medical staff have said 240 prisoners who applied were unqualified for medical release. At least a handful of those prisoners lived in a prison infirmary, used wheelchairs or had terminal diseases like end-stage liver disease, and at least three died in prison, records show.

There are other frail and disabled prisoners who don’t see a doctor on a regular basis, “so there’s no way for the doctors to know about their condition,” Soble said.

Michael Merritt knows the limitations of the prison health care system all too well. His brother Phillip hasn’t received proper medical treatment in prison for years, he said, and he’s afraid of what could happen as his dementia worsens.

He wishes the state would let his brother die at home, where his family can take turns caring for him, instead of a prison cell where he’s unsure if there’s anyone to properly look after him.

“I don’t know what the problem is,” Merritt said. “They know they can’t take care of him in there the way he is supposed to be taken care of.”

Medical release decisions dictated by politics

The Prisoner Review Board never told Merritt why they denied his brother’s medical release request. Their deliberations happen behind closed doors and the law doesn’t require them to provide an explanation.

Board chair Shelton said members weigh many factors when voting on medical release requests, but primarily focus on an applicants’ prior convictions, where they plan to live once they’re released and testimonies from the victims of their crimes.

An analysis of the board’s decisions shows there’s likely another factor at play: politics.

Under state law, the board is required to be roughly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The 12 current members include former law enforcement officials, educators, attorneys and counselors. Pritzker appoints all board members, who are then confirmed by the state senate.

Medical release requests are decided by panels of three board members; at least two must agree to either approve or deny a request. Shelton said board members are “chosen randomly” for the panels.

But so far, Republicans have cast more votes in medical release cases than Democrats — and they are much more likely to vote to deny those requests, an analysis of voting data shows.

Three out of the four Board members with the highest denial rates — Jared Bohland, Kenneth Tupy and LeAnn Miller — are Republicans. Each of them voted to deny release in more than 70% of the cases they heard, and each voted on more than a third of all medical release requests, voting data shows.

Bohland and Tupy, along with Democrat Matthew Coates, were on the panel that denied Phillip Merritt’s medical release request in July. They voted to deny six out of seven requests that day, records show.

A month earlier, Bohland was part of another panel, this time with two other Democrats, when they heard the case of 82-year-old Saul Colbert.

Like Merritt, Colbert developed dementia while serving time for armed robbery. They both also had previous violent convictions, records show; Merritt had a conviction for attempted murder, while Colbert was convicted of murder.

Both had family ready to take them in, and both were represented by the same attorney with the Illinois Prison Project. But the board voted 2-1 to release Colbert, with Bohland voting against.

“The only difference between those cases was the panel,” Soble said.

Through a spokesperson, Bohland, Tupy and Miller declined to answer questions about their voting records.

Lisa Daniels, a former board member and restorative justice practitioner, said she believes some of her former colleagues are ideologically against letting anyone out of prison early.

They “simply believe that a person should complete the entirety of their sentence, no matter the circumstances they present in their petition, no matter how that person may have shown themselves to be redeemed and no matter (if they’re) no longer a threat to public safety,” Daniels said.

Daniels resigned from the board in January, one of six Democrats to step down or fail to be appointed since 2021. In the past few years, the state GOP has turned the board into a new front in the ongoing debate over criminal justice reform.

Democrats, who have a supermajority in the state senate, have failed to muster enough support among their own ranks to get all of Pritzker’s appointment through leaving the board with three vacant seats.

Pritzker declined an interview request.

In a statement, he acknowledged his administration has had a hard time recruiting potential board members because of the frayed political atmosphere around its work.

“In today’s political climate where supporting common sense criminal justice reform has become a lightning rod, the Coleman Act’s initial success should be seen as major progress in the right direction,” he said.

Coleman Act has “failed to live up to its promise”

Joe Coleman (right), seen getting an award from warden Thomas F. Page at the Menard Correctional Center, was a decorated Army veteran who died of prostate cancer while in prison. An Illinois law named for him allows prisoners to request early release if they’re terminally ill and expected to die within 18 months or if they’re medically incapacitated and need help with more than one activity of daily living, such as eating or using the bathroom.

The day Pritzker signed the Coleman Act, its main sponsor, state Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, said in a press release the law would transform Illinois’ prison system and allow families to properly say goodbye to their loved ones.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t afford this mercy to Joe Coleman, but I’m proud that we’ll be able to do so for hundreds of other Illinoisans,” Guzzardi said.

Criminal justice reformers celebrated the Coleman Act as a model for other states to follow. In a report last year, FAMM, a prominent national advocacy group, said the Coleman Act was one of the strongest so-called “compassionate release” laws in the country.

But so far, the act has “failed to live up to its promise,” said Mary Price, FAMM’s general counsel at FAMM and the report’s author.

Advocates want lawmakers to institute several changes to the Coleman Act to encourage the Prisoner Review Board to release more people.

Lawmakers should require board members to visit prison infirmaries to see firsthand the state of prison health care, advocates said. The board should also receive more training on how to evaluate the medical conditions of prisoners applying for release.

Advocates also want the state to provide prisoners who are applying for medical release with an attorney to argue their case. Guzzardi said he’ll advocate for funding for that in the upcoming fall legislative session.

Lawmakers should also allow prisoners to reapply for medical release sooner than currently allowed, said William Nissen, a white-shoe-lawyer-turned-pro-bono-attorney for prisoners who’s worked on a handful of medical release requests so far.

Prisoners denied medical release currently have to wait six months before they can reapply, unless they get a special exemption from the board. Shelton has only approved three out of 10 requests so far, according to figures provided by the board’s chief legal counsel.

“If you’re representing a terminally ill person, then a large part of their remaining life is gone before you can even apply again,” Nissen said.

Nissen said lawmakers should also require the board to explain why they denied a medical release to “instill a certain amount of discipline in the decision-making process.” If board members have to articulate their reason for denying someone release, maybe they’ll reconsider the decision, he said.

Phillip Merritt’s attorney is in the process of refiling his medical release request. His brother Michael doesn’t know if he’ll get out this time. And he hasn’t been able to reach Phillip in three weeks — the cellmate who had helped facilitate the calls was apparently transferred.

But he’s certain he and his family can give Phillip a more humane send-off than any prison could.
“At least he could go peacefully,” he said.

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Poll: Support for Missouri abortion rights amendment growing

Published

9 months ago

August 29, 2024

Natural Bridge

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A proposed constitutional amendment legalizing abortion in Missouri received support from more than half of respondents in a new poll from St. Louis University and YouGov.That’s a boost from a poll earlier this year, which could mean what’s known as Amendment 3 is in a solid position to pass in November.SLU/YouGov’s poll of 900 likely Missouri voters from Aug. 8-16 found that 52% of respondents would vote for Amendment 3, which would place constitutional protections for abortion up to fetal viability. Thirty-four percent would vote against the measure, while 14% aren’t sure.By comparison, the SLU/YouGov poll from February found that 44% of voters would back the abortion legalization amendment.St. Louis University political science professor Steven Rogers said 32% of Republicans and 53% of independents would vote for the amendment. That’s in addition to nearly 80% of Democratic respondents who would approve the measure. In the previous poll, 24% of Republicans supported the amendment.Rogers noted that neither Amendment 3 nor a separate ballot item raising the state’s minimum wage is helping Democratic candidates. GOP contenders for U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer and secretary of state all hold comfortable leads.“We are seeing this kind of crossover voting, a little bit, where there are voters who are basically saying, ‘I am going to the polls and I’m going to support a Republican candidate, but I’m also going to go to the polls and then I’m also going to try to expand abortion access and then raise the minimum wage,’” Rogers said.Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Kehoe has a 51%-41% lead over Democrat Crystal Quade. And U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is leading Democrat Lucas Kunce by 53% to 42%. Some GOP candidates for attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer have even larger leads over their Democratic rivals.

Brian Munoz

St. Louis Public RadioHundreds of demonstrators pack into a parking lot at Planned Parenthood of St. Louis and Southwest Missouri on June 24, 2022, during a demonstration following the Supreme Court’s reversal of a case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion.

One of the biggest challenges for foes of Amendment 3 could be financial.Typically, Missouri ballot initiatives with well-funded and well-organized campaigns have a better chance of passing — especially if the opposition is underfunded and disorganized. Since the end of July, the campaign committee formed to pass Amendment 3 received more than $3 million in donations of $5,000 or more.That money could be used for television advertisements to improve the proposal’s standing further, Rogers said, as well as point out that Missouri’s current abortion ban doesn’t allow the procedure in the case of rape or incest.“Meanwhile, the anti side won’t have those resources to kind of try to make that counter argument as strongly, and they don’t have public opinion as strongly on their side,” Rogers said.There is precedent of a well-funded initiative almost failing due to opposition from socially conservative voters.In 2006, a measure providing constitutional protections for embryonic stem cell research nearly failed — even though a campaign committee aimed at passing it had a commanding financial advantage.Former state Sen. Bob Onder was part of the opposition campaign to that measure. He said earlier this month it is possible to create a similar dynamic in 2024 against Amendment 3, if social conservatives who oppose abortion rights can band together.“This is not about reproductive rights or care for miscarriages or IVF or anything else,” said Onder, the GOP nominee for Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District seat. “Missourians will learn that out-of-state special interests and dark money from out of state is lying to them and they will reject this amendment.”Quade said earlier this month that Missourians of all political ideologies are ready to roll back the state’s abortion ban.“Regardless of political party, we hear from folks who are tired of politicians being in their doctor’s offices,” Quade said. “They want politicians to mind their own business. So this is going to excite folks all across the political spectrum.”

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Democrat Mark Osmack makes his case for Missouri treasurer

Published

9 months ago

August 29, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Mark Osmack has been out of the electoral fray for awhile, but he never completely abandoned his passion for Missouri politics.Osmack, a Valley Park native and U.S. Army veteran, previously ran for Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District seat and for state Senate. Now he’s the Democratic nominee for state treasurer after receiving a phone call from Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Russ Carnahan asking him to run.“There’s a lot of decision making and processing and evaluation that goes into it, which is something I am very passionate and interested in,” Osmack said this week on an episode of Politically Speaking.Osmack is squaring off against state Treasurer Vivek Malek, who was able to easily win a crowded GOP primary against several veteran lawmakers including House Budget Chairman Cody Smith and state Sen. Andrew Koenig.While Malek was able to attract big donations to his political action committee and pour his own money into the campaign, Osmack isn’t worried that he won’t be able to compete in November. Since Malek was appointed to his post, Osmack contends he hasn’t proven that he’s a formidable opponent in a general election.“His actions and his decision making so far in his roughly two year tenure in that office have been questionable,” Osmack said.Among other things, Osmack was critical of Malek for placing unclaimed property notices on video gaming machines which are usually found in gas stations or convenience stores. The legality of the machines has been questioned for some time.As Malek explained on his own episode of Politically Speaking, he wanted to make sure the unclaimed property program was as widely advertised as possible. But he acknowledged it was a mistake to put the decals close to the machines and ultimately decided to remove them.Osmack said: “This doesn’t even pass the common sense sniff test of, ‘Hey, should I put state stickers claiming you might have a billion dollars on a gambling machine that is not registered with the state of Missouri?’ If we’re gonna give kudos for him acknowledging the wrong thing, it never should have been done in the first place.”Osmack’s platform includes supporting programs providing school meals using Missouri agriculture products and making child care more accessible for the working class.He said the fact that Missouri has such a large surplus shows that it’s possible to create programs to make child care within reach for parents.“It is quite audacious for [Republicans] to brag about $8 billion, with a B, dollars in state surplus, while we offer next to no social services to include pre-K, daycare, or child care,” Osmack said.Here’s are some other topics Osmack discussed on the show:How he would handle managing the state’s pension systems and approving low-income housing tax credits. The state treasurer’s office is on boards overseeing both of those programs.Malek’s decision to cut off investments from Chinese companies. Osmack said that Missouri needs to be cautious about abandoning China as a business partner, especially since they’re a major consumer of the state’s agriculture products. “There’s a way to make this work where we are not supporting communist nations to the detriment of the United States or our allies, while also maintaining strong economic ties that benefit Missouri farmers,” he said.What it was like to witness the skirmish at the Missouri State Fair between U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic challenger Lucas Kunce.Whether Kunce can get the support of influential groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which often channels money and staff to states with competitive Senate elections.

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As Illinois receives praise for its cannabis equity efforts, stakeholders work on system’s flaws

Published

9 months ago

August 29, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Medical marijuana patients can now purchase cannabis grown by small businesses as part of their allotment, Illinois’ top cannabis regulator said, but smaller, newly licensed cannabis growers are still seeking greater access to the state’s medical marijuana customers.Illinois legalized medicinal marijuana beginning in 2014, then legalized it for recreational use in 2020. While the 2020 law legalized cannabis use for any adult age 21 or older, it did not expand licensing for medical dispensaries.Patients can purchase marijuana as part of the medical cannabis program at dual-purpose dispensaries, which are licensed to serve both medical and recreational customers. But dual-purpose dispensaries are greatly outnumbered by dispensaries only licensed to sell recreationally, and there are no medical-only dispensaries in the state.As another part of the adult-use legalization law, lawmakers created a “craft grow” license category that was designed to give more opportunities to Illinoisans hoping to legally grow and sell marijuana. The smaller-scale grow operations were part of the 2020 law’s efforts to diversify the cannabis industry in Illinois.Prior to that, all cultivation centers in Illinois were large-scale operations dominated by large multi-state operators. The existing cultivators, mostly in operation since 2014, were allowed to grow recreational cannabis beginning in 2019.Until recently, dual-purpose dispensaries have been unsure as to whether craft-grown products, made by social equity licensees — those who have lived in a disproportionately impacted area or have been historically impacted by the war on drugs — can be sold medicinally as part of a patient’s medical allotment.Erin Johnson, the state’s cannabis regulation oversight officer, told Capitol News Illinois last month that her office has “been telling dispensaries, as they have been asking us” they can now sell craft-grown products to medical patients.“There was just a track and trace issue on our end, but never anything statutorily,” she said.

Dilpreet Raju

Capitol News IllinoisThe graphic shows how cannabis grown in Illinois gets from cultivation centers to customers.

No notice has been posted, but Johnson’s verbal guidance comes almost two years after the first craft grow business went online in Illinois.It allows roughly 150,000 medical patients, who dispensary owners say are the most consistent purchasers of marijuana, to buy products made by social equity businesses without paying recreational taxes. However — even as more dispensaries open — the number available to medical patients has not increased since 2018, something the Cannabis Regulation Oversight Office “desperately” wants to see changed. Johnson said Illinois is a limited license state, meaning “there are caps on everything” to help control the relatively new market.Berwyn Thompkins, who operates two cannabis businesses, said the rules limited options for patients and small businesses.“It’s about access,” Thompkins said. “Why wouldn’t we want all the patients — which the (adult-use) program was initially built around — why wouldn’t we want them to have access? They should have access to any dispensary.”Customers with a medical marijuana card pay a 1% tax on all marijuana products, whereas recreational customers pay retail taxes between roughly 20 and 40% on a given cannabis product, when accounting for local taxes.While Illinois has received praise for its equity-focused cannabis law, including through an independent study that showed more people of color own cannabis licenses than in any other state, some industry operators say they’ve experienced many unnecessary hurdles getting their businesses up and running.The state, in fact, announced last month that it had opened its 100th social equity dispensary.But Steve Olson, purchasing manager at a pair of dispensaries (including one dual-purpose dispensary) near Rockford, said small specialty license holders have been left in the lurch since the first craft grower opened in October 2022.“You would think that this would be something they’re (the government) trying to help out these social equity companies with, but they’re putting handcuffs on them in so many different spots,” he said. “One of them being this medical thing.”Olson said he contacted state agencies, including the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, months ago about whether craft products can be sold to medical patients at their retail tax rate, but only heard one response: “They all say it was an oversight.”This potentially hurt social equity companies because they sell wholesale to dispensaries and may have been missing out on a consistent customer base through those medical dispensaries.Olson said the state’s attempts to provide licensees with a path to a successful business over the years, such as with corrective lotteries that granted more social equity licenses, have come up short.“It’s like they almost set up the social equity thing to fail so the big guys could come in and swoop up all these licenses,” Olson said. “I hate to feel like that but, if you look at it, it’s pretty black and white.”Olson said craft companies benefit from any type of retail sale.“If we sell it to medical patients or not, it’s a matter of, ‘Are we collecting the proper taxes?’ That’s all it is,” he said.State revenue from cannabis taxes, licensing costs and other fees goes into the Cannabis Regulation Fund, which is used to fund a host of programs, including cannabis offense expungement, the general revenue fund, and the R3 campaign aiming to uplift disinvested communities.For fiscal year 2024, nearly $256 million was paid out from Cannabis Regulation Fund for related initiatives, which includes almost $89 million transferred to the state’s general revenue fund and more than $20 million distributed to local governments, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.Medical access still limitedThe state’s 55 medical dispensaries that predate the 2020 legalization law, mostly owned by publicly traded multistate operators that had been operating in Illinois since 2014 under the state’s medical marijuana program, were automatically granted a right to licenses to sell recreationally in January 2020. That gave them a dual-purpose license that no new entrants into the market can receive under current law.Since expanding their clientele in 2020, Illinois dispensaries have sold more than $6 billion worth of cannabis products through recreational transactions alone.Nearly two-thirds of dispensaries licensed to sell to medical patients are in the northeast counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will. Dual-purpose dispensaries only represent about 20 percent of the state’s dispensaries.While the state began offering recreational dispensary licenses since the adult-use legalization law passed, it has not granted a new medical dispensary license since 2018. That has allowed the established players to continue to corner the market on the state’s nearly 150,000 medical marijuana patients.But social equity licensees and advocates say there are more ways to level the playing field, including expanding access to medical sales.Johnson, who became the state’s top cannabis regulator in late 2022, expressed hope for movement during the fall veto session on House Bill 2911, which would expand medical access to all Illinois dispensaries.“We would like every single dispensary in Illinois to be able to serve medical patients,” Johnson said. “It’s something that medical patients have been asking for, for years.”Johnson said the bill would benefit patients and small businesses.“It’s something we desperately want to happen as a state system, because we want to make sure that medical patients are able to easily access what they need,” she said. “We also think it’s good for our social equity dispensaries, as they’re opening, to be able to serve medical patients.”Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, who was the first statewide project coordinator for Illinois’ medical cannabis program prior to joining the legislature, wrote in an email to Capitol News Illinois that the state needs to be doing more for its patients.“Illinois is failing the state’s 150,000 medical cannabis patients with debilitating conditions. Too many are still denied the patient protections they deserve, including access to their medicine,” Morgan wrote, adding he would continue to work with stakeholders on further legislation.Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.

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