Politics
Missouri advocates sound alarm after IVF safeguards stymied in legislature
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Danielle Faith Zoll and her husband have one last embryo frozen in Missouri.Zoll’s daughter, who is 2 years old, was conceived through in vitro fertilization. But during that pregnancy Zoll developed Hellp Syndrome, an extreme and life-threatening case of preeclampsia.After giving birth to her daughter at 35 weeks, Zoll’s doctor advised her not to do so again out of fear that she wouldn’t survive another pregnancy.That warning left Zoll and her husband unsure of the best future for their last embryo. And the uncertainty turned to fear after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in February.“Because of all we go through, (embryos) feel like more than just this clump of cells, because it’s this hope that you’ll be a parent one day,” Zoll said. “And you lose so much going through infertility.”Zoll, like many Americans, was shocked when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos were “extrauterine children.” Several fertility clinics in that state immediately stopped IVF for fear of being found liable for wrongful death if they accidentally destroyed an embryo.Floored by the news and the unknown, Zoll reached out to her state senator, Tracy McCreery, an Olivette Democrat. This is scary, Zoll told her. Can you do something?McCreery would later reference stories like Zoll’s on the Senate floor, but ultimately wasn’t able to push through legislation to protect the procedure.
Danielle Faith Zoll underwent multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization to become pregnant with her daughter, Makayla, who is now 2 years old. Zoll, 37, of St. Louis, advocated for protecting I.V.F. in Missouri following a February 2024 ruling in Alabama that temporarily halted the procedure.
A handful of attempts to protect IVF through the legislative process were introduced, but didn’t make it far in either the House or Senate. In part, the reluctance stemmed from a belief that IVF wasn’t in immediate danger, and therefore was an issue for a different year as more urgent matters — and Senate dysfunction — often ruled the day.But advocates for IVF say the lack of urgency was a mistake. They believe ambiguity in state law leaves IVF vulnerable to the same conclusion reached by Alabama’s highest court.McCreery’s bill, which would have excluded IVF from any “unborn children” language in Missouri law, never got a Senate hearing.“Unfortunately in the legislature,” McCreery said, “there just weren’t people willing to have that discussion.”House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican and a physician, said many Republicans, himself included, are eager to put more protections in place. But in the House, he said IVF legislation came too late in the session to realistically act on what he called a preemptive bill.“Going forward, protecting Missouri parents’ ability to access in vitro fertilization will be a priority,” said Patterson, who is expected to become speaker of the House next session. Lawmakers, he said, “need to do everything we can to protect access to IVF.”IVF, the process of collecting a woman’s eggs, fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory and transferring resulting embryos to her uterus or freezing them for later, has become increasingly common. It gives people the opportunity to both start families later in life and grow families in spite of illness or infertility.In 2021, more than 97,000 babies were born thanks to assisted reproductive technology, more than double the number a decade earlier, according to the CDC.While many Missouri Republicans voiced support for IVF, in the wake of the Alabama ruling a few spoke out against the procedure, arguing families should only create as many embryos as they intend to use, running counter to how the process currently works.“I’ve got a group of colleagues that believe that what happened in Alabama could happen in Missouri,” McCreery said. “But like a lot of things in the state of Missouri, people just cross their fingers and hope that there isn’t a problem.”
Annelise Hanshaw
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The Missouri IndependentMissouri State Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-Ollivette, prepares to introduce a bill in February 2024.
‘No protection for IVF’In an attempt to start answering his clients many questions after the Alabama decision came down, Tim Schlesinger, a surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies attorney in St. Louis, took to a blog post.“This case has no direct legal impact outside the State of Alabama,” he assured Missourians.In a recent interview with The Independent, Schlesinger said this still holds water. But it also stands alongside another truth in Missouri: “There is no protection for IVF right now.”He’s carefully watched the ripple effect of the Alabama decision move north.He doesn’t believe IVF is at risk of disappearing in Missouri, but without legislation that protects both patients and clinics, he said it’s not impossible for Missourians to find themselves in a situation similar to Alabama.Schlesinger knows the topic well. Several years ago he litigated the case that set the precedent for defining an embryo as “property of a special character.”That case, McQueen v. Gadberry, arose from a custody dispute over embryos in a divorce.Schlesinger, who represented Gadberry — the ex-husband who didn’t want his ex-wife to use the remaining embryos to create children, and won — said the outcome confirmed patients have the right to decide what to do with their pre-embryos.But Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court chief justice and dean emeritus at St. Louis University School of Law, fears the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a case cited in the McQueen v. Gadberry decision, means the precedent set by the judge’s decision would no longer apply if brought before a court again.Missouri law states that all life begins at conception. Wolff interprets conception and fertilization to be one in the same in regards to state law, adding that it would simply take “an overeager prosecutor” for Missouri to find itself in a position similar to Alabama.“I’m not being an alarmist about this, I’m not being an extremist. I’m not saying that everybody should believe that what the legislature says is true,” Wolff said. “But I think you have to take seriously what the legislature says. They were perfectly serious when they wrote it as far as I can tell.”Schlesinger is hopeful that if a state court was faced with a case similar to McQueen v. Gadberry today, it would come to the same conclusion it did several years ago, since he said that case wasn’t premised on Roe v. Wade.But, he added, there’s no guarantee the judges now sitting on the Missouri Supreme Court would agree.“That’s a legitimate concern, and an insightful concern brought up by Judge Wolff, but in my opinion, the overturn of Roe v. Wade should not impact McQueen v. Gadberry,” he said. “Because the reason for the overturn of Roe v Wade was not relevant to what is the character of a pre-embryo.”Schlesinger said a more immediate impact he’s considering is on doctors.“The people who live in Missouri and want to have outstanding fertility care in Missouri might be impacted just by physicians reluctant to expand within Missouri until enough time has passed that they see how efforts in this regard are going to shake out,” he said.
Brian Munoz
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St. Louis Public RadioThe Missouri State Capitol last May in Jefferson City.
Failed legislative attempt to protect IVFAs Missouri senators debated legislation blocking Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving Medicaid reimbursements, McCreery brought forward an amendment that would exempt IVF from Missouri’s current statute which states that life begins at conception.“I assumed wrongly, stupidly, that when the legislature passed a total ban on abortion, that that would be enough. People would feel like they had their Pro-Life credentials,” state Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Democrat from Kansas City, said during the debate. “What I have since realized is, it’s never enough.”The amendment never made it to a vote, but it fueled much of the Democratic senators’ filibuster that April evening.But unlike inside the statehouse, McCreery believes the issue remains largely a nonpartisan one. Conservative voters have reached out asking for her help protecting the procedure.After the Alabama decision, Republican state Rep. Bill Allen of Kansas City consulted his priest, who encouraged him to look around the church at the children born through IVF.“That helped square my faith and politics, I’ll tell ya,” Allen said, adding: “To me it was the right thing to do for Missouri families, and I just wanted to protect it.”In late February he filed legislation that would have clarified the right to IVF. His bill, like McCreery’s, was never granted a committee hearing.Allen plans to file the bill again next year, if re-elected.“There may have been election year politics that got in the way this time,” he said. “But with those removed next year, I’m really optimistic that this can get through as a priority.”
Brian Munoz
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St. Louis Public RadioMissouri Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, and Freedom Caucus member speaks in May during the last day of the legislative session in Jefferson City.
Conservative oppositionWhile IVF remains a fairly bi-partisan issue, some hold-outs remain.During a Missouri Freedom Caucus press conference this spring, state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, decried the current IVF process as the “reckless storage and disposal of human life.”Often, several embryos are created at once, in part because many don’t survive to the point of implantation in the womb. It’s common practice to immediately freeze any embryos created, even if the intention is to implant them quickly.“If you’re getting in vitro fertilization, it needs to be the embryos that are going to be implanted at that particular time,” Brattin said. “I know it’s an expensive process, but creating this huge inventory of life being frozen, I don’t agree with it.”He proposed that families create an embryo, and then if unsuccessful, come back and create another one. Brattin could not be reached for comment.After the Alabama decision, many Republicans spoke up in favor of the current IVF process. But others, like Brattin, stood by a long-held anti-abortion belief that embryos should not be stored, discarded or used for science.During a mid-March Senate debate on an education bill, state Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, was asked by Arthur if he believed IVF should be allowed. Moon had proposed an amendment which would have required students be taught that life begins at conception.“If I were the one with the magic wand, I would have discouraged it because now you’ve got how many fertilized embryos out there? And what happens if that facility where they’re housed loses power and they all die? Who’s culpable?” Moon said. “And so I think we’ve created a problem, and we created it. Only God’s supposed to create in that fashion. And we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do it.”Abolish Abortion Missouri leader Wesley Scroggins, who has endorsed Moon, called IVF “sinful” at a rally in Jefferson City following the Alabama ruling.The Missouri GOP website, under a page titled “faith and family,” lists support for “the protection of the lives of in vitro fertilized embryos and all other human embryos from the beginning of biological development” just below its support for marriage between “one man and one woman.”Asked about IVF during a KSDK interview in March, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold and a leading anti-abortion lawmaker, said Missouri already has some of the most “permissive” IVF laws in the country, so she saw no further need to protect the process through legislation.She noted that since the passage of the Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act in 2019, there’s been no litigation filed against I.V.F.“If Missouri was going to do something, they would’ve needed to already address it,” she said.In the days following the Alabama decision, lawmakers in that state passed a law shielding IVF clinics and providers from civil and criminal liability, raising concerns that while such a law allowed clinics to reopen immediately, it also prevented families from having the ability to sue if something went wrong.Asked in March if she’d support a law to more clearly protect I.V.F., Coleman said she would be hesitant.“Because it’s broadly legal right now,” Coleman said. “I wouldn’t want to enact something that would actually make it harder for a family who would receive malpractice in their medical practice to be able to be made whole.”Lingering effects of Alabama decisionAs president of the Midwest Reproductive Symposium International, Dr. Amber Cooper looks forward to discussing emerging technologies and advancing access to care at the annual gathering.But this year, the Alabama decision lingered like a shadow over the group.“We’ve had to pivot and discuss ‘how do we protect patients, patients’ decisions? How do we protect embryos in storage? How do we protect clinics, particularly in states that are more threatened by some of these political decisions?’” said Cooper, a board certified reproductive endocrinologist and medical director for fertility clinic Kindbody St. Louis, who led this year’s conference, happening this week in Chicago.
Dr. Amber Cooper, medical director at Kindbody St. Louis, a fertility clinic, said she believes that without legislative protecting in vitro fertilization, there remains some risk to the procedure in Missouri.
She said a lot of misunderstanding around IVF has emerged in mainstream conversations since this spring, including a belief that many patients have numerous excess embryos in storage.Cooper said it’s lucky if even 20% of the embryos created result in a live birth.Creating only one embryo to use at a time is unrealistic, she said, and overlooks considerations including rapidly declining egg pools, patients undergoing cancer treatment and patients with genetic diseases.“If we only create one embryo at a time, the success of IVF becomes profoundly lower,” she said. “And in a country where (health plans) don’t often pay for IVF … the access to care, and the affordability becomes the biggest issue of all.“Cooper said many of her Missouri patients have asked about storing their embryos across the river in Illinois, where reproductive rights are more expansive. Larger nationwide fertility clinics are also considering where to grow and expand. Right now, Cooper said, red states look less appealing than blue ones.“I think IVF still could be at risk,” Cooper said. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet in Missouri, compared to some other states. But it’s still a state where we are nervous that it could be.”Legislation, she said, would be the most effective way to alleviate that concern.The U.S. Senate might take up legislation to protect IVF access on a federal level as soon as this week. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a bill from moving forward to vote on reinforcing access to contraception. Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt were among the Republicans who blocked the legislation.Another possible protection lies in an initiative petition campaignhoping to ask Missouri voters if they want to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability. The amendment, if approved for the November ballot, reads, in part: “The government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”Waiting and worryingWhile IVF has largely faded from the headlines in recent weeks, people struggling to grow their families across Missouri still grapple with concerns sparked by the Alabama news.Maddie Bobbitt and her husband Jerel have been trying to conceive since December 2019.
St. Louis couple Maddie and Jerel Bobbitt, have been trying to conceive since late 2019. “I was in denial for quite some time out doing IVF. I just never never thought that I would be someone that would need that,” Maddie Bobbitt said.
One egg retrieval, six frozen embryos and two miscarriages later, they’re waiting to implant their remaining two embryos in August.About one in five married women between the ages of 15 and 49 experience infertility in America, meaning they are unable to get pregnant within the first year of trying, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In St. Louis, where Bobbitt lives, it’s one in six couples.“But when you are the one in six, you know, it feels like one in 6 million, it feels like you are the only one,” Bobbitt said.When news of the Alabama decision came as Bobbitt, 33, was in the thick of IVF, she was filled with rage.“IVF in and of itself is so unbelievably stressful and heartbreaking, and just very traumatic,” Bobbitt said. “When you add on top of it that we live in a very conservative, red state, that just adds an extra layer of stress and angst and being afraid for my own personal health and wellbeing and safety.”Jovonna Jones, 35, who is undergoing infertility treatment, considered traveling to Mexico to finish her current round of IVF when she and her husband, Donovan, heard the news. But for now, they’re continuing to see their doctor in St. Louis.“You really don’t have room for stress,” Jones said. “Because your body needs to be as calm as possible so those follicles can continue to grow.”So far she and her husband have undergone five IVF cycles. They’ve taken out two loans and hosted numerous fundraisers to afford the $70,000 they’ve paid out of pocket in the hopes of making Jones’ husband a father.She has four children of her own from a previous relationship.Missouri is not among the growing number of states that mandate some form of infertility coverage, despite efforts by some lawmakers to require insurance coverage for the process to help alleviate some of the financial burden that comes with growing a family through IVFZoll, the St. Louis mother who petitioned her state senator earlier this year to protect the procedure, watches her daughter play with baby dolls and fiercely hopes she won’t also experience the toll of infertility.“IVF is one of the most pro life things I’ve ever heard,” said Zoll, who runs an infertility-focused nonprofit in St. Louis called Making a Miracle, “How can you try and take that away? The impact would be just detrimental to so many families, because it’s our right to have children and build them.”This story was originally published by The Missouri Independent, part of the States Newsroom.
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Poll: Support for Missouri abortion rights amendment growing

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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
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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

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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

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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
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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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