On May 31, the Illi­nois House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed what is per­haps the most pro­gres­sive recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na usage bill in the Unit­ed States, by a mar­gin of 66 – 47. The bill passed in the Sen­ate on Wednes­day by a mar­gin of 38 – 17. Gov­er­nor J.B. Pritzk­er is expect­ed to sign the bill imme­di­ate­ly, which would make the recre­ation­al use of mar­i­jua­na legal in Illi­nois as soon as Jan­u­ary 2020, and would also make Illi­nois the first state to pass recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion through a pro­posed bill rather than a bal­lot ini­tia­tive. This is an impor­tant exam­ple of state gov­ern­ment lis­ten­ing to its con­stituents: 60% of Illi­noisans are in favor of the legal­iza­tion of recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na use.

These measures may help right some of the wrongs done to communities of color by the Nixon-era “War on Drugs.”

The bill allows adults 21 and old­er to pos­sess up to 30 grams of cannabis flower, 5 grams of cannabis con­cen­trate and 500 mil­ligrams of THC-infused prod­ucts. In this regard, the bill is sim­i­lar to those passed in oth­er states. Cal­i­for­nia, for exam­ple, allows for pos­ses­sion of 28.5 grams of cannabis plant mate­r­i­al and 8 grams of con­cen­trate. Neva­da per­mits pos­ses­sion of an ounce of flower and 3.54 grams of con­cen­trate. And Mass­a­chu­setts also allows for pos­ses­sion of an ounce and up to 5 grams of concentrate.

But what sets the Illi­nois bill apart from oth­er states’ bills is its pro­vi­sion to expunge pri­or low­er-lev­el mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and ​“intent to deliv­er” con­vic­tions — and its inclu­sion of com­mu­ni­ty rein­vest­ment and social­ly equi­table licens­ing prac­tices. These mea­sures may help right some of the wrongs done to com­mu­ni­ties of col­or by the Nixon-era ​“War on Drugs.”

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of the Illi­nois bill includ­ed a pro­vi­sion for auto­mat­ic expunge­ment of mis­de­meanor and Class 4 mar­i­jua­na con­vic­tions. Due to Repub­li­can con­cerns of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, how­ev­er, the bill was amend­ed to include pro­ce­dur­al expunge­ment only. As the Chica­go Tri­bune explains it, pro­ce­dur­al expunge­ment is a process by which the state police will iden­ti­fy low­er-lev­el, non-vio­lent con­vic­tions of pos­ses­sion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and ​“intent to deliv­er” and send them to local state’s attor­neys to review. If the state attor­ney has no objec­tions, the cas­es get sent up to the state’s Pris­on­er Review Board, which then makes a rec­om­men­da­tion to the gov­er­nor on whether the indi­vid­ual should be par­doned. The gov­er­nor may then issue a pardon.

Mul­ti­ple oth­er states where recre­ation­al use is legal­ized have intro­duced process­es for expunge­ment, which helps open up job and hous­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for those whose options would oth­er­wise be lim­it­ed due to mar­i­jua­na convictions.

The bill also includes a stip­u­la­tion to ensure that indi­vid­u­als from mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties will receive dis­pen­sary licens­es. The bill reads: ​“Dur­ing the licens­ing process, ​‘social equi­ty appli­cants’ will receive 25 points out of the 200 points. Bonus points will be award­ed for sev­er­al cat­e­gories, includ­ing for Illi­nois-based appli­cants and appli­cants with a labor peace agree­ment.” The bill states that a social equi­ty appli­cant is an Illi­nois res­i­dent who has lived ​“for at least five of the 10 pre­ced­ing years in a ​“dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed neigh­bor­hood,” mean­ing a neigh­bor­hood where res­i­dents have been affect­ed by high rates of arrests, con­vic­tion and incar­cer­a­tion due to ​“vio­la­tions of the Cannabis Con­trol Act.” Peo­ple whose records are expunged under the act are also con­sid­ered social equi­ty applicants.

The bill also details where the rev­enue from the new mar­ket will be going. Most notably, a full 25% will be trans­ferred to a fund for com­mu­ni­ty reinvestment.

The bill’s pro­gres­sive mea­sures, aimed at sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, couldn’t come soon enough. The War on Drugs began under Richard Nixon in an attempt to curb the use of harm­ful, addic­tive drugs and to social­ly weak­en both black peo­ple and anti-Viet­nam War pro­tes­tors. John Ehrlich­man, Nixon’s coun­sel and Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for Domes­tic Affairs, famous­ly summed it up (report­ed by Dan Baum):

The Nixon cam­paign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two ene­mies: the anti­war left and black peo­ple. … By get­ting the pub­lic to asso­ciate the hip­pies with mar­i­jua­na and blacks with hero­in, and then crim­i­nal­iz­ing both heav­i­ly, we could dis­rupt those com­mu­ni­ties. We could arrest their lead­ers, raid their homes, break up their meet­ings, and vil­i­fy them. … Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

As a result of sen­ti­ments like this, mar­i­jua­na got lumped in with drugs such as hero­in under the Con­trolled Sub­stances Act of 1970, which made pre­scrip­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of such drugs ille­gal. The Act’s neg­a­tive effects on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or are pal­pa­ble. Accord­ing to the ACLU, black peo­ple are ​“3.73 times as like­ly than whites to be arrest­ed for mar­i­jua­na.” And accord­ing to Drug​Pol​i​cy​.org, of the near­ly 600,000 peo­ple arrest­ed for pos­ses­sion-only charges in 2017 in the Unit­ed States, almost half (46.9%) were black or Lat­inx peo­ple, even though black and Lat­inx peo­ple make up only 31.5% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion, accord­ing to the July 2018 cen­sus. This shows a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of black and Lat­inx peo­ple being arrest­ed for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion, despite the fact that white and black peo­ple use mar­i­jua­na at sim­i­lar rates.

The next step is hold­ing state offi­cials account­able to the promis­es con­tained in the bill, to ensure that racial bias does not creep into the expunge­ment process. The poten­tial effects of the bill have not been com­pre­hen­sive­ly stud­ied, but the sale of recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na will undoubt­ed­ly open up a source of rev­enue for a state plagued by a deficit, and expunge­ment will open up job oppor­tu­ni­ties for those with pri­or con­vic­tion records.

The Illi­nois bill is not per­fect. Auto­mat­ic expunge­ment would have been far more pro­gres­sive. But it’s still a step in the right direc­tion toward right­ing the neg­a­tive effects that the war on drugs has wrought on com­mu­ni­ties of color.