Illinois officials have posted a new form that recreational marijuana dispensaries can file in order to get permission to begin selling medical cannabis, which is taxed at a much lower rate than adult-use products.

The expanded opportunity for marijuana businesses comes as part of omnibus cannabis legislation that was passed by lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker (D) this session.

The law also doubles the amount of marijuana that adults can legally possess, allows drive-thrus and curbside pickups at dispensaries and lets them stay open for longer hours of operation, among other changes.

The five-page form released this week by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) allows businesses holding an active Adult Use Dispensing Organization License issued under the state’s Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act to apply for a separate Medical Cannabis Dispensing Organization license.

“Any adult use dispensary holding an active license in good standing may opt-in for a medical dispensary license,” IDFPR said in previously issued guidance about changes made by the new cannabis omnibus legislation. “This medical dispensary license will allow the dispensary to sell cannabis to medical cannabis patients at the medical tax rate up to the medical patient’s allotment.”

Dispensaries can begin filing the form on September 10, and then they must wait for their so-called “15-37 License,” named after the section of the legislation, to be issued before they can begin medical cannabis sales.

Applicants must submit a non-refundable fee of $5,000 and, if approved, their standard renewal fee will then increase by an additional $10,000 per renewal cycle.

The new form, noted earlier by Illinois New Joint, asks about a business’s disciplinary history, ownership structure and tax compliance.

It also asks questions such as:

• Does the dispensary include materials or signs informing patients that possession of cannabis is illegal under federal law?
• Does the education plan offer information available to patients on the potential side effects of cannabis?
• Does the dispensary offer materials or signs informing patients that consuming cannabis is prohibited in public places?

Businesses also need to submit a patient prioritization plan that includes details about designating a medical cannabis line and registers that will serve medical cannabis patients first, as well as a floor plan showing a dedicated consultation area for patients.

The medical cannabis sales option for adult-use businesses is part of SB 3222, which was approved by the legislature and signed by Pritzker in June.

As enacted into law, the measure also allows residents of the state who are over 21 years of age to possess up to 60 grams of marijuana flower—double the amount in prior law. They are also able to have up to 10 grams of cannabis concentrates and infused products with up to 1,000 mg of THC—also double the earlier limit. Possession amounts for adult non-residents are also doubled under the bill and are generally set at half of what residents can carry.

Additionally, people with past convictions for possession of up to 60 grams of marijuana are now able to have those records expunged—double the previous cutoff allowing only those with convictions for up to 30 grams to be eligible.

The legislation also recriminalizes hemp THC products with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container, in line with a federal ban that is set to take effect in November.

The state’s list of medical marijuana qualifying conditions is also being expanded to add female orgasmic disorder, endometriosis, ovarian cysts and uterine fibroids.

The governor held a signing ceremony for the legislation at a marijuana dispensary, saying he is “proud that Illinois continues to lead the nation in showing what thoughtful, balanced cannabis policy can achieve.”

In 2019, Pritzker signed the state’s initial marijuana legalization policy into law.

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Legalizing marijuana for adult use is linked to gradual reductions in violent crime—while medical cannabis legalization is associated with lower rates of property crime—according to a new study.

As more states move to enact legalization, researchers at Jack Welch College of Business and Technology, Barnard College, National Chengchi University and Longwood University set out to investigate the relationship between different versions of the reform and crime trends.

The study, published in the journal Economic Modelling, identified a unique divide when looking at the impact of legalizing cannabis for recreational as compared to medical purposes, with analytic models revealing how different forms of regulated access seem to be associated with different patterns in criminal activity.

“Novel policies may generate unintended spillovers, particularly when legalizing one activity alters incentives for other forms of crime,” the study authors wrote. “Marijuana legalization provides a useful setting to examine such effects, given the staggered adoption of medical and recreational laws across all 50 U.S. states.”

“We find that medical legalization reduces property crime, while recreational legalization reduces violent crime.”

While initial analyses signaled that adult-use legalization might increase property crime, once state-specific time trends where incorporated into the researchers’ models with synthetic specification, “the effect becomes negative and statistically insignificant.”

“Overall, the findings indicate that estimated crime effects are highly sensitive to identification assumptions and do not provide robust evidence of an increase in property crime following legalization, underscoring the importance of careful empirical design in policy evaluation,” the study says.

Notably, the researchers found that the impact of cannabis reform on crime is gradual, with the effects manifesting “powerfully after several years.” For advocates pushing for legalization, the authors said, that means they should exercise caution in how they frame the issue, as crime rate declines don’t appear to happen overnight.

“What emerges from our multi-step analysis is a birds-eye view of legalization: medical and recreational legalization have different impacts and operate through diverse channels, with significant lag effects,” they said. “The overarching result from our main synthetic difference in differences model is that medical legalization reduces property crime, while recreational legalization reduces violent crime.”

“Such effects support the Becker hypothesis that legalization drives out crime. Building up to the synthetic difference in difference model, we discovered that there may also be important lag effects. The diverse and potentially time-varying impacts of medical and recreational legalization raise a cautionary note to policymakers: those considering legalization should wait a few years before pronouncing on the cost–benefit impact, focus on the specific type of legalization, and study closely the outcomes from similar states.”

It’s not immediately clear from the research why medical and recreational marijuana legalization would lead to diverging crime trends, but  the broader impact of the reform on crime has been studied before.

Last year, for example, a study looking at Atlanta’s move to decriminalize marijuana concluded that, contrary to warnings from some critics, the policy change in fact led to a decrease in violent crime as police turned their attention to more urgent matters.

A 2024 analysis of violence between intimate partners separately found that legalizing marijuana for adult use “results in a substantial decrease in rates of intimate partner violence.”

A 2021 study, meanwhile, found that reductions of crime generally after marijuana legalization was being significantly understated because the FBI data is inconsistent and comes from voluntary participation by local agencies.

In 2020, researchers looked at how adult-use marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado affected crime rates in neighboring states, and the resulting study determined that passage of recreational cannabis laws may have actually reduced certain major crimes in nearby jurisdictions.

The previous year, a federally funded study found that legalizing marijuana has little to no impact on rates of violent or property crime. The policy change did seem connected to a long-term decline in burglaries in one state, however.

A 2018 study from the think tank RAND said county-level data from California suggested that there was “no relationship between county laws that legally permit dispensaries and reported violent crime,” the researchers wrote. What’s more, there was a “negative and significant relationship between dispensary allowances and property crime rates,” though it’s possible that’s the product of “pre-existing trends.”

That same year, researchers at Victoria University of Wellington and Harvard University found that medical marijuana laws essentially have a null effect of crime rates, with one big exception: A nearly 20 percent reduction in violent and property crimes in California following the legalization of medical cannabis there.

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