In this episode, we explore the intricate challenges of child reunification efforts in Illinois when a parent happens to be a cannabis user. During the episode, my guests discuss real-life cases where cannabis use has complicated the process, shedding light on the intersection of legal cannabis and child welfare in our state.
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Links mentioned during show
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8ejmViYWNg&t=0s
- https://thecolememo.com/2024/02/17/legal/
- Click here for CannaEquityIL LinkTree
- ColeMemo.com/IsItLegal
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The auto-generated transcript is available below.
in 2019 Illinois governor JB pritsker signed the Cannabis regulation and Tax Act into law and despite being widely referred to as the legalization of cannabis in Illinois it is so crucial to understand that in so many ways cannabis remains illegal under state law if you’re curious to learn more about the limitations of legalization in Illinois go to the memo.com isit legal because I’m always asking is it legal if you can still get arrested for cannabis once again that’s the memo.com is it legal today we’ll be discussing an issue that I recently discovered at an advocacy meeting from what I understand parents are facing trouble when it comes to getting reunified with their children and it’s because of their cannabis use this is the Cole memo I’m your host Cole Preston every episode is released in audio video and transcri format to find the transcript audio or video version of any episode please refer to the description of the episode that you’re listening to now within that description 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episode of the coal [Music] M today I’m joined by Bailey and Peter Peter since you’ve been on the show in the past you want to quickly remind our listeners who you are and what you do for the community for sure thank you Cole and and thank you Bailey for including me um my name is Peter Kos I’m the deputy director of the Cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition we are 501c3 501c4 nonprofit based in Chicago uh we host a variety of direct three entry services including record clearing technology literacy training uh lots of Education around know your rights and political education and lots of policy advocacy so um I try and spend most of my time doing policy advocacy I think folks who have listened and heard me before have probably talked heard me talk about policy work in the past and um excited today to talk about some well uh unfortunate that we have to be here talking about this very important issue um but this is a super important issue that folks need to hear about so we’re grateful for the platform yeah and bayy um why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and and what you do for the community and I think that’ll segue us into what we’ll be speaking about today sure um my name is Bailey CA I work for a family Advocacy Center um my office is based out of Springfield Illinois um we have another office um and we cover contractually various counties um in that region providing services to families involved with uh child welfare DCFS and other private systems or at risk for involvement yeah and so on my show I talk about all the time uh the many different ways in which I find myself asking is cannabis legal in the state of Illinois and when I recently heard what you and and some of your colleagues have been dealing with I found myself asking myself that again is cannabis legal in the state of Illinois tell us what you encountered and credit to to Peter I heard about this issue at an advocacy meeting um so thank you Peter for bringing it to the community’s attention but tell us about this issue sure um I started working at this organization um 2020 um and so kind of following some changes um and we initially just started looking into how that will impact us is there a kind of memo rolling out um and it seemed seemed really just like well they legalized it now so what do we do um but that didn’t seem to stay very um consistent and though um I directly wasn’t experiencing a lot of the issues where I worked um when branching out to other areas or about a year ago um I stepped into a different role um and I was doing some kind of quality assurance looking at our cases for next points of advocacy Trends um and I started seeing this reoccurring um issue with you know clients numbers still aren’t below this certain amount um and I started asking well what is that or why or where’s the policy and I couldn’t find anything um some time later that took me into just emailing various um places Peter ended up being one of them saying this is what we’re encountering down here um is there anyone that can point me in the direction of what is the you know clear concise general rule for this or um if we’re experiencing elsewhere or what we can do and here we are a number of months later so still trying to get an answer and to put a fine point on it if I could you’re saying that some parents their use of cannabis is becoming a disgust disc Point um and like you say maybe a dis a discussion around the threshold in which or what they test at can you break that down a little bit more just for the listeners that the common numbers I see is 200 or 500 though when you’re looking at the documentation of that which is what I do I’m reading the notes that people input um it’s pretty clear that we’re not sure what the following letters are 200 what um 500 what um and so I don’t I don’t know that anyone really knows what they’re enforcing or where it comes from um I think I mentioned before that it often just feels like one governing body is kind of pointing to the other and it’s like well we defer to them we defer to them we defer to them um over the years I have called um inpatient and outpatient facilities um I have called um screening centers that we use locally um I’ve gone to the ones then that take it another level and send it out to um I guess for medical review um private pay places to do you know your own diagnostic screening and I just can’t get um an answer and I don’t know how we make decisions then without that yeah and I’ll just put insert a little bit of humor here but before I wanted to return and kind of put this in a bottle uh just cuz I get what you’re saying but I’m just worried for listeners that don’t know this is the meme you were referencing when you this is like the experience you’re getting when one Department says you know go over here and then the other department says go over there and uh so just wanted to add a little bit of humor to this situation this this depressing situation but to put it into a bottle um like I say it is that a parent Cannabis used is actually being questioned questioned today and can I ask you like does do any of these people that you’ve heard of running into this are they medical patients does that change at all the conversation or yeah because um occasionally what you see so I’ve had a clients before um idph uh launched kind of like a pilot program for um cannabis is like a um probably butchering what it’s actually called but as a a route for um you know recovery and I at one point had worked with a family and one person in the family unit had um you know applied for that um program but they had kept coming back saying you know it’s just every time this person drops their levels are over 2,000 um and I mean I could get enough uh you know digging on my own to realize that that’s probably a pretty high um number but then when I reached out to you know various places it’s hard to determine when to say that was used um it could have been the night before and so that was the thing that kind of stopped me is that I was told um you know you could say use the night before and if you went and test right away you might be lower than you would be the very next day and and there’s just different ways people metabolize this um yeah that makes it even harder yeah absolutely and I’ll play actually a clip from one of our own lawmakers that wrote at least one of the thresholds that we’re referring to uh which is always a really good clip to watch but I guess I wanted to ask you fortunately I never had to deal with like child custody issues or anything like as as a person I’ve never had to deal with it like ancillary to any family members of mine you had mentioned you had dealt with it why why are parents being drug tested at all is my question um you know I would like to say that’s only the case in situations where substance abuse was a factor to the removal of the children um but that’s not true um substance abuse could have been a factor eight years ago I’ve seen situations where somebody had some you know charges 10 15 years ago um when these um checks run through these background checks on people you know it kind of it’s it it it gets it gathers a lot of information so any previous history with DCFS um somebody might have had a case before um and so you know there’s various reasons it can get there um but I think the general answer would be that it’s almost a where where where at my experience is that it’s a blanket part of um what a service plan whether or not it stays indefinitely almost all of our cases have um drug screenings as part of their case at some point or another whether or not substance abuse was an issue wow wow that’s this is just this is just insane and um I’ve got the clip queued up but I’ll save it just for a moment we can get back to the idea of like this this threshold and where you know we don’t I know we don’t know the answer um but we can at least talk about one that has been established um but I’m just curious like you know I I have it’s interesting when I learned about this issue I had never heard about it as I said at the start of the show and then unfortunately somebody reached out to me and said Cole I never thought this would be the case but DCFS is questioning me about my cannabis use right now and they’re threatening to take my child away and I’m like holy crap this is obviously like I’m not saying that you but to hear it like organically from multiple sources that was crazy to me so um is this affecting a lot you said you were noticing a trend um I mean is it a statistically significant trend is it you know in some ways I think you know we’ve made some progress here so what I do not hear of um in the areas that we see is that the child is being taken from that so um I think there’s been enough uh training throughout like medical staff that they don’t call DCFS if say you know there’s cannabis in the system of a pregnant mother or um someone in the hospital um unless there’s you know obviously other factors and I I do not know of any situation that I’ve worked with in the last four years where somebody’s child has been taken for cannabis it’s more about getting them back it’s saying that you know we’re there but we just have to get these levels down or they just have to stop using and then we can do more visitation or you know move towards that goal um and so I don’t know who’s you know deciding that again and then you know it kind of feels like a move the goalpost like uh for me and I don’t know that anyone wants to go out and say hey I’m here to you know push for um families involved with DCFS to use um marijuana I I don’t have the answer to that um I have no idea and I am not going to claim to be the person that makes that decision what I do know is that we have a role to provide education to our families and what they do with that is their choice but when they say to me hey I use this substance how will this impact my DCFS case and I say I have no idea depends on the case worker the agency the supervisor um the court system you’re in uh in the day of a week that you know what judge gets it so do you just say better to refrain um and I think that’s everyone’s General consensus but I don’t know that that’s right either so we’re in a loop yeah and oh Peter I was actually just about to toss it to you go ahead I was just going to you Echo everything that’s been said and I think it really you know really important for for folks to understand like this is it sounds discombobulated because it is discombobulated and it’s because these conversations aren’t happening in the the key you know with the key decision makers that need to be you these need to be had with like there needs to be uniformity there needs to be standards um you know there’s a a much bigger kind of scientific question about blood tests and you know how to make sure we have testing that actually accurately represents like you know again all of our bodies processes plant differently and so there’s a lot of science to be kind of address addressed um that you know definitely not going to ever downplay that um but just really reiterating that like so much of this is haphazardly put together um and it comes back to again always telling the story like we legalized you know in a very short time period uh in 2019 where very few people got to read the the legislation before it was was finalized um and these are the kind of consequences that we have that um unfortunately you know we would have loved to have prevent and and now we have to to fix um in a major way M well said well said and uh I want to bounce back to some other things I’ve heard about DCFS that you may not have heard about but I think it’s worth speaking about in case our listeners hadn’t heard about um in case and in case you found it interesting um but to Peter’s point and to to your point Bailey um here are some comments from State Representative Bob Morgan who was involved in creating the per se limit for driving while intoxicated now this is not this is doesn’t sound like the same thing you’re dealing with but it’s the only threshold I’m aware of so like let’s just start here right um there’s still an element and it continues to be major problem of uh intoxication driving well intoxicated with cannabis because we don’t have a 0.08 nor do we have technology to even enforce that if we did have any kind of standardization so there’s no there’s no per se limit illo actually has a per se limit but we literally made it up we made up the per se limit it’s not based on 50 60 years of driving while intoxicated with alcohol that we know 008 is the average and yet we all know somebody who’s 90 or 100 pounds who drinks one beer and can’t drive and we also know people who drink 12 packs and are just fine because the body absorbs alcohol differently same with cannabis some people that are regular users are not necessarily impaired even if they’re using quite a bit um so we don’t have that standardization so from law enforcement side that’s so again that was a little bit not an Apples to Apples topic here but that’s the only threshold I’m aware of so there’s got to be some like H for lack of better words like residual policy from the before times that like you say and this is what I wanted to wrap it back around to um you you talked about like kind of the patchwork and depending on which judge you get and which county you’re in and what day of the week it is um you could get a you know a vastly different result or a radically different result um and we see that in so many different ways in the with cannabis in Illinois right so depending on where you’re uh driving with cannabis in Illinois they may have a different law enforcement policy on the odor of cannabis than a different County right um it’s crazy it’s um you know the odor comes up a lot you know we get a call that hey you know one of the families you worked with they came to their visit and um you know they smelled of marijuana and so of course you know I’m going to coach them that that’s probably not in their best interest um I don’t think anyone is going to say that it’s in your best interest to you know smell like marijuana um going into a DCFS office or or um anything like that but what makes me more Curious isn’t that I I can get behind that I can coach people on that um I can work with families on kind of you know best foot forward all of this um but I think it’s that the the impairment part that I struggle with because again when you say we don’t know and the rabbit hole this has taken me down um to even find things like I known mention before where they’re like you know 8% of the population doesn’t metabolize it the same way or um you know I think about impaired and then I think about some of the prescription drugs that people take and there’s not a breathalyzer to really say if you’re impaired there um but I think by the standard of impairment it would be arguably the case right so um for me it’s just that this doesn’t seem consistent or even maybe just you know like where who decides that for who I guess I don’t know yeah and that’s ultimately what brings us here today right we can’t get a clear answer nobody it’s the Spider-Man meme like we can’t get an answer which is frustrating and our goal you know within our work is not necessarily to um you know enforce this policy change it’s just to help the families navigate it this is what we have this is the way DCFS works this is your best fastest route forward how can we help you and when we have this big question mark um and there’s not a policy of DCFS that says this is how we you know evaluate families here um there’s nothing in the court system that says this is how we do it I have heard of that um 200 to 500 with probation case um in some of my asking within the criminal justice system um but I I also know some of that has changed with new state you know I think something for 2024 just changed that again so who keeps up with it yeah Peter were you going to jump in with something yeah just you know kind of to the to the you know um the much larger conversation again just the organization and you know who’s who has the foresight to have these conversations obviously there’s a lot of complexity to this there’s a lot of things you know we talk about the technology and being able to actually provide testing like there’s a lot of of things that have been unanswered that you know it’s not one person’s fault or the state’s fault necessarily um but there’s a lot of of layers to this and um you know one of the points that we want to be really clear about is is just the War on Drugs as a whole these are the kind of conversations that have to be brought up when we we talk about not just legalizing cannabis but again you know caring the harms that have been done is reuniting families making sure that families can actually be clear like okay I do have a medical card but there’s you know my case manager saying this is the stated policy you know at least there’s a stated policy to go off of not to say that you know there’s um have a lot of feelings about what those should go what should be in those but like we need you know we we can uh we have to have the conversation if we want the policies to happen and so um you know as as bad as it is that we’ve gotten this far um and there’s still this this um dysfunction and this this lack of certainty um you know we have to have you know we had to you know have to force the issue at some point and so um you know just really grateful to to bayy and her whole team for for having this conversation and for your leadership because yeah this this is the tip of the iceburg um you know in Illinois is far from the only state that that’s going through this Virginia is actually their governor just is Work vetoed legislation on this um literally this the past week and so um this is something that’s going to continue to come up in all 50 states and um you we just want everybody to be safe and happy and healthy and um there’s a lot of ways to do that that are are not based on punitive policies I think our state um was so vocal about being you know one of the most Progressive marijuana you know bills and how it was really aimed at repairing some of the damage that we have done and when you think about the amount of families that were separated Perman Ely over the years um because of marijuana use and and often times only it was illegal it was treated the same as anything else and so now we’re supposed to repair this and and if that’s being done it’s probably a whole another conversation um but then here we are with some of the other most vulnerable um populations and uh you know it’s it’s still I guess the the that we said we were you know here to fix is still happening um I think it’s a conversation for DCFS as new federal regulations come out in child welfare um a big push is to talk about trauma informed practice and I think it’s really fascinating to get into um some of the um you know benefits of marijuana um for people um suffering from various uh traumatic experiences and you know maybe we’re really missing the Mark here on what we’re having people do or take or not take um and again you know that should be done with somebody that knows about it more than me but um I think it could be a benefit to some people and instead it’s weaponized with their kids and that’s really sad yeah and I’ll probably butcher this quote but representative Carol Ammons once said that she has concerns about the the idea that people may not understand what legal legalization means in implementation form and I worry that we go much further without a clear answer look like I I know somebody who’s just five years younger than me and they don’t know a world without legal cannabis they don’t know a world so like if if they became a parent they wouldn’t think twice and if they got into some situation like the parents you’ve spoke to they wouldn’t think twice about that that wouldn’t even I mean I can buy it legally at a store what are you talking about I can’t use it you know and something that Bailey mentioned earlier is is the impairment of other substances specifically you know I’ll I’ll dig into legal Pharmaceuticals as a as a per you know someone who used to be dependent on on opioids and and and really struggled because of of over prescription and and um all the things that come with that like you know how are we you know actively just giving people prescriptions and just sending them out the door and acting like that’s okay um yeah there’s a much bigger conversation around just like overall wellness and like how we treat people um it can’t just be like oh well just take this and you’ll be good like there needs to be a much more holistic conversation about that and what we’re looking for today right is the answer to the simple question uh can I use cannabis as a parent in Illinois with DCFS involved right with in the context of DCFS gotcha yeah because you can if you’re a parent otherwise and I think an interesting question for me is you know when you work in these fields I’m sure like your own you start to know a lot of people in similar you know work as you um and they hold various titles and positions and so um I’ve asked myself over the years you know how many people tasked with deciding is for this family um use marijuana themselves their spouse does their relative their mom their sibling you know surely there’s somebody in their life um that uses and and yet we’re seemingly okay with restricting that for other people um solely based on their DCFS involvement which yeah seems like another form of discrimination in and of itself like they’re already in a tough situation that nobody wants to be in it’s hard to get an answer to one of the things I kind of circle back to a lot within my work is that I think we um don’t defer to The Experts that DCFS and its um um you know private agencies contract to work with so you know you send somebody to substance view service to parent to class to a mental health to you know any of these services and then um you know the the case worker or anyone involved in the case says well no we want to do this too um and we’re like well is that the recommendation of the substance abuse provider is that the recommendation of the mental health provider um and oftentimes it’s not because if you call these various um facilities and you say hey I need to come in for inpatient or outpatient because I smoke marijuana they will not take you I’ve tried I have called and they will not take you um so it’s hard for me what I have found is various um opinions within the recovery World about marijuana um right you know i’ I’ve asked people I know involved in a circles and you know um the the group sessions people that work at the local um outpatient centers and some of them feel pretty strongly about it and some of them don’t um but it doesn’t seem that they are at least here um taking patients in just for the use of that so why test for the use of it why continue to even monitor it if you can’t go to get help for it anyway what do we need to even monitor I guess yeah well said well before we go I just wanted to mention in case people weren’t aware of this and I I should just mention you know that uh I I was told this by the person in the story and you can watch this conversation so I’ll share that information in the podcast notes if you’d like to hear it from them the person thems uh but this medical patient reached out to me uh his name was David and he informed me that he got in trouble uh for simply possessing over a 100 grams of cannabis in Illinois and he told me the ordeal did not conclude there David recounted that the Department of Children and Family Services DCFS launched an investigation into allegations of neglect and abuse stemming from the raid on his house despite the evidence supporting such accusations which of course just int intensified and already taxing situation they raised concerns about his use of a locking system on the door of his growroom questioning whether the lock was employed as a tool of abuse David told me his intention was simply to comply with the law which I’ve got pasted right here cannabis cultivation must take place in an enclosed lock locked place he also informed me that it was a one-way lock in other words it just locks you from getting into the grow room in other words again complying with the law it doesn’t lock you in into the grow room you couldn’t lock somebody in there with your plants and the way he got it set up I just wanted to bring attention to this story folks because again this is just another instance where as I say in the headline it seems like it’s legalized but we still have some criminal um you know you’re still dealt with you’re treated like a criminal um if you don’t walk down the narrow tight rope that we call legalization in Illinois I will be curious to see how many more parents you get that have fa this whether it’s Family Court DCFS or their um you know Affiliates um this has been you know something we’ve seen for for quite a while and uh I know in one of our kind of pushes for this we ended up reaching out to a um state representative who told myself and a supervisor at our office that there’s no way that um marijuana is the only factor in Illinois and we were like I I don’t know what we need to do but um you know it gets hard getting somebody to speak out when they have your kids and to say hey this is happening to me um you have the most important thing to hold over as um you know yeah and if I could just because I still like I understand the issue but I think I’m still missing something and maybe my listeners are like this goes without saying Cole why would you even ask this but I I’m trying to understand so like obviously these are all different cases so you can’t tell me the details of each one you know but I’m just trying to like get a a sense because again I’m not familiar with how this works so is it that typically speaking that they’ve gotten their children taken taken away and then in order to do these visits they have to go through this drug test that is that how this works I’m just trying to understand so sobriety is not a requirement for visitation though they can be stopped if you show up actively impaired so you know the only requirement to stop a visitation is that there be an immediate risk of harm um so I don’t think it’s necessarily the visitations are being stopped it’s the return home of the children from their placement with foster homes families or whatever where we’re saying um or you go into these reviews to look and see if you’ve progressed well and they say well everything’s great except for the substance abuse they’re not rated satisfactory here because their levels are still too high and then you go to the court system and the same agency that holds the court case they write a court report and they say you know this person’s levels have been over 2,000 on the last four drops and um who knows what that means but then you know it’s it’s highlighted in court too so it just delays the process of reunification um of course there are situations where that’s not the only factor and of course there are situations where it’s not time or in the best interest of the family but there are also those that we have where the family is ready and this is the only barrier to successfully um you know reunifying the family unit and that’s where we have to say should this be this be the only factor to stopping a family [Music] from reunifying and I don’t know I don’t know you know I’m not going to say one way or another that would be strictly um opinion not fact and and I just want to know what to tell someone you know so they know right right in your position you need to be I mean this really doesn’t come down to how you feel about Canabis this you you need to be able to give parents a clear answer in your position right yeah and you can’t because Spider-Man me well any um any other thoughts uh that that we haven’t touched on with this topic it’s it’s a pretty heavy one so I’m kind of just trying to absorb it uh but I wanted to give you both space in case we hadn’t touched on any super important bases uh in this conversation I mean should people is there a resource where people can reach out if they’re experiencing this I’m not trying to overwhelm the resour um I mean our if you look at family wherever you are in Illinois if you search family advocacy centers you will get taken to um a Illinois de of website that will give you various locations for where you’re at they are all independently you know operated nonprofits they contract with bcfs um to provide this service so um reach out that way um you know look for what’s available in your area um the state also has meetings in various counties called partnering with parents so it’s led by birth parents who’ve successfully reunified with their children um and they just kind of provide like a safe place for families involved with care to come in and you know ask questions um you know gather information um just different things like that so um if there’s somebody involved um there are people trying to help so please find us um reach out um you know I can’t say that we have an answer for what you’re going through but we’ll try yeah at least not yet hopefully more people being aware of the fact that there is not a clear answer that’s that’s my hope in inviting you on when I heard about this issue from Peter I’m like look I have not even heard about this issue which means other I don’t mean to say that I’m like the gatekeeper of all information but if I’ve not heard about it very likely that other people have’t I’m very like plugged into the Illinois cannabis ISS you know the issues that uh exist and this is one I hadn’t heard about so um I’m I’m hoping that awareness might get some answers I think this is an unusually vulnerable position for parents um no matter what the reason is they will be flooded um online or in other capacities about all the opinion as to why they have lost their children or how they should get them back um not to mention for a lot of people there is a lot of um regret and shame and guilt um and sadness and you know all these things mixed up in there but then for a lot of people there’s fear and whether or not it’s relevant all the time um it’s there you know there’s a lot of distrust in um this this system and the child welfare system as a whole and we know that you know we know how incredibly violent it is to separate a family um and so to get somebody to shine a light on themselves and say hi this is me um because once you’re involved in the system too A lot of these um cases you get they carry a a time frame that they’re with you you know so if you have another DCFS involvement in the next 5 years 10 years um you know in some ways it’s kind of always there but you might still be under that time frame um and people are they’re scared they’re scared of losing their kids again um so I think it takes a lot of Bravery to kind of step out into that Spotlight and try to you know speak up but um I think people U myself included will probably be met with you know why not just quit or why not just do this or do that and it’s like sure you know I I I could say maybe that’s what I would do but is that the right answer the best answer the ethical answer the legal answer and those are the questions that keep me um employed um but also just pushing into this is is I don’t get to decide what’s right or wrong for these people you know I just help them say these are the options and and you figure out what’s best for your family so yeah well I want to thank you for the work that you do and Peter were you about to say something yeah I was just going going to offer folks if folks are you know listening and you’re curious to like you know get engaged with with you know especially like the the Cannabis Equity Coalition uh we definitely are happy to be a resource for folks to reach out to happy to put you in touch with folks you know anywhere we can in the state um where folks are helpful you know definitely please lean on us because um yeah this is this is definitely a very serious issue um and again we need to address it comprehensively so let us know how we can be helpful um to anybody listening whether you’re directly impacted you’re an advocate and you want to you know for change on this let us know and and and we’ll get to work well said well I want to thank both of you for what you do uh for the community bayy and Peter and um I just wanted to plug very quickly that if you’d like to get involved in some way or another I’ll put a link in the episode description to go to the Cannabis Equity Illinois coalition’s uh Instagram page or their link tree I’ll show you how to do that right now if you if you’re watching the podcast I’m clicking on their link tree and they’ve got so many different options where you can get involved where I heard about this issue was at the policy meetings so if you want to you know kind of get involved in those conversations and maybe even be at the same table as Peter and I um go ahead and enjoy uh join those policy meetings I also have to say that coming up we have Springfield uh there’s a Springfield advocacy sign up there’s a lot of information available on that Peter do you want to just quickly uh tell the folks before we close about that I think it’s one of the best ways to like really see how the sausage just made and get involved for sure yeah definitely would encourage folks that sign up uh whether you’ve been to Springfield you’ve never been or you’ve been 100 times we definitely would you know we’re trying to build our our you know our bases as large as we possibly can so on Thursday April 18th a little less than a month from now we’re going to be doing this um advocacy day in Springfield we have a bus coming from Chicago um so anybody coming from Chicago you’re welcome to to ride down for free with us uh but we are encouraging folks if you want to drive yourself you want to take the Amtrak down um regardless of where you’re coming from Illinois we want to like you know meet up with folks uh from everywhere on on Thursday April 18th uh and again definitely encourage folks to fill out the form in the in the uh link tree um and specifically you know we’ll have workshops well ahead of time so that folks are are fully prepared for what to to what to expect in Springfield what to expect from that day um but yeah we definitely encourage folks if you haven’t seen yeah how this sausage is made for yourself um you should uh it it makes everything makes a lot more sense once you see it for yourself and you’re you know can be a lot more effective as an advocate when you when you realize kind of who our politicians are you know what motivates them and and you know why they pass policy because uh it’s a lot of layers to it a lot of um Dynamics to understand and to process and how you can be the best Advocate you can be so again encourage folks to join us uh Thursday April 18th and even if you’re not available the 18th I know is a Thursday it’s a work day um you know we have these policy meetings every other Monday um you know the signups in the willink tree as well definitely encourage FKS folks to to plug into those as well yeah and I just want to say that cannabis is a gateway drug to politics um if you get involved in you know cannabis policy you might find how you could uh shape you know policy in other areas which I think is a really great skill to to learn if you’re trying to you know maybe enact some positive change in your community Peter and Bailey before we go any last thoughts thank you well I yeah thank you so much apprciate you guys um caring about this you know um we’ve kind of been out here on our own trying to figure this out for a while and uh it’s just nice to have some people that are like this is an issue and we agree with you so I appreciate that yeah absolutely absolutely and I guess just one last quick question you said whenever they bring up that 2,000 and what whatever number they bring up they never give you like a unit like a nanogram or us so if you see it um on the the test itself you know if you get that from the testing agency you have it there if it’s written into something else that’s being submitted to court or something um hit or miss um you know 2500 are the levels that I’ve seen um most common gotcha but when you’ve seen it listed is does it nanogram or okay cool thank you thank you for uh clarifying that um and folks I hope you found as much value in this conversation as I did we’ll see you on the next episode of the coal memo and if you are affected by these issues uh please just reach out to Peter uh the Cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition or myself and while we can’t promise you any answers because we don’t have any uh we’ll still do our best to uh connect you with the right resource Take Care
The Cole Memo 
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