Cannabis has more to offer than a high — in Evanston, it’s funding historic change.

In 2019, City Council established a reparations fund for Black residents to recognize the harms of segregation and housing discrimination through financial assistance and relief. Black residents are eligible for reparations if they lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 — a period when state-sponsored segregation and redlining were rampant — or are a direct descendant of someone who did.

So far, $5.5 million has been distributed, with most of the money coming from the 3% sales tax on marijuana, according to the city’s Reparations Committee.

There are two dispensaries in Evanston: Zen Leaf and OKAY Cannabis. Though all $10 million of the proposed resolution was meant to come from the sales tax, the lack of a projected third dispensary meant that revenue fell short of estimated cannabis sales. In 2022, City Council approved real estate transfer tax funds to also support reparations.

At the heart of it, the reason for the cannabis sales tax was convenience. Ald. Bobby Burns (5th), a member of the Reparations Committee, said the best funds for new programs are new taxes that aren’t tied to existing initiatives. Cannabis sales were untouched.

But coincidence might have been serendipity.

“There’s some poetic justice in using cannabis tax revenue to help repair the very community harmed by its prohibition,” Burns said. 

Northwestern history Prof. Lina Britto, who teaches a course titled “Cannabis: Global History,” said that cannabis offenses have been applied inequitably, largely targeting Black and Brown men.

“It has everything to do with the problem of mass incarceration we have in the United States,” Britto said. “A lot of people are in jail because of either smoking marijuana, or selling it, or even just possession of the substance.”

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, Black residents of Illinois were 7.5 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession before it was legalized in 2019, the third-highest racial disparity in marijuana arrests in the country. It followed an upward trend, with a 118.3% increase in the disparity from 2010 to 2020.

The state-level legalization of cannabis in 2019, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, came in tandem with investing in affected communities as the “most equity-centric law in the nation.”

Still, it is difficult to acquire a marijuana license in Illinois — Burns said Illinois is a “limited license state.” He has a social equity cannabis license, applicable to people who live in an area that Illinois has deemed “disproportionally impacted” by poverty or anti-marijuana laws –– which includes Evanston’s 5th Ward –– as well as people with criminal history eligibility, meaning they were convicted of or arrested for low-level cannabis offenses, among others. Despite these efforts, 2022 data showed that 88% of Illinois dispensaries were white majority-owned.

The transition from licensure to dispensary ownership isn’t an easy one. Evanston’s OKAY Cannabis opened as the first social equity dispensary in the country. But at the end of last year, retailer Nature’s Grace and Wellness bought the business to help the stores survive.

“It’s very expensive to run a legal, real, dispensary,” said Roger Dillman, vice president of retail for Nature’s Grace and Wellness. “It’s hard to turn the corner and keep your doors open when people are selling something that they’re claiming is the same right down the street, for far less money and zero regulations.”

This prevalence of injustice points to deeper roots, though Evanston’s reparations resolution adheres to a narrow time frame.

“When we talk about reparations, we usually go back to this short-term time frame of the last 50 years or so,” Britto said. “But there’s another horizon for the conversation of reparations for the cannabis industry. It has to do with this history that starts in colonial times, and is a global history.”

Britto is referring to the institution of slavery. Cannabis originated in Asia and came to what is now the U.S. through the Triangular Trade, the interaction responsible for the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans and the establishment of chattel slavery in the Americas. As such, the link between cannabis and African Americans stretches long before segregation.

“We are not talking about decades, now we’re talking about centuries, and I don’t think we are there yet,” Britto said.

For Corey Winchester, an Evanston Township High School history teacher and an instructor and Ph.D. student in learning sciences at NU, history and futurity go hand-in-hand.

“I wonder about the ways that Evanston holds its histories and how it’s actively working towards addressing that,” Winchester said.

In 1940, Evanston’s 5th Ward was 95% Black. Now, it’s only 36%. The Black population of Evanston has dropped overall, with an 8% decrease since 2000. Though reparations target Evanston’s existing Black residents, Winchester said the shrinking numbers might point to another possible form of repair.

“What is Evanston gonna do to cultivate these opportunities for Black folks to move in?” he said. “This needs to be expansive and comprehensive. The opportunity to imagine is there.”

He hopes to see the Evanston resolution extend to Chicago or Cook County, places with similar histories of segregation and redlining.

OKAY Cannabis straddles the border between Evanston and Chicago, but the tax revenue only benefits Evanston’s Black population.

“The fact that they’re two totally separate cities means that they’re both gonna do whatever it is that they want to do,” Dillman said. 

The 3% cannabis sales tax exists in other parts of the state. But while Evanston’s tax goes straight into reparations, other cities like Chicago apply it to other parts of their budget.

As the program expands, Burns believes that decisions must continue to come from the communities themselves.

“A longstanding debate within the reparatory justice community is what constitutes reparations and who should decide what that looks like,” Burns said. “Reparations is allowing the harmed group to define what repair looks like for them.”

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