Cook County commissioner John Fritchey and three Chicago aldermen will hold a press conference Thursday morning to call on Chicago and suburban police to issue tickets instead of making arrests for the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
“The simple truth is that the decades-long policies that we have had toward possession of small amounts of marijuana have failed to do anything other than fill our jails with nonviolent offenders, strain our budgets, and according to some studies, even cause an increase in more serious crime,” Fritchey said in a prepared statement.
Reached by phone, Fritchey alluded to the extraordinary cost of current pot policies—which Ben Joravsky and I have calculated to be at least $78 million annually—but declined to say anything else until the presser tomorrow. He’ll be joined there by aldermen Walter Burnett Jr. (27th Ward), Richard Mell (33rd), and Ariel Reboyras (30th).