New Poll Suggests Illinoisans Support Medicinal Marijuana

2 comments March 10th, 2008

The Marijuana Policy Project, the organization behind a Chicago Democrat’s renewed push to legalize medical marijuana, released a poll today suggesting a majority of Illinoisans believe the seriously ill should be able to use the drug to relieve their pain.

About 68 percent of Illinoisans say they support medical marijuana use and 27 percent oppose it, according to a poll taken by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research of Washington, D.C. The full results are here.

On Thursday, a Senate committee heard testimony  about this year’s medical marijuana legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Cullerton. A similar bill failed last year in the Senate chamber with a vote of 22-29. The lone Republican to vote for the measure was Rockford’s own, Sen. Dave Syverson.

During the committee, one woman testified that allowing people with chronic diseases to use and grow marijuana sends mixed signals to teens. Last year, this was one of the Republican sticking points.

The poll found that 23 percent of those polled believe such legislation sends the wrong message.

The split along party lines on this question was probably predictable. About 38 percent of Republicans agree with the wrong message statement, as did 9 percent of Democrats. About 25 percent of those who identify as independents also considered it a wrong message.

The statewide sample was 625 registered voters, with a four percent margin of error.

The group also conducted regional polls, including one in Rockford:

ROCKFORD REGIONAL POLL RESULTS

400 registered voters interviewed February 12-14, 2008 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C.
Margin for error is plus or minus 5%.

QUESTION: This year, the Illinois legislature will consider a bill to make Illinois the 13th state to allow seriously and terminally ill patients to use marijuana for medical purposes with their doctors’ approval.

Do you support allowing seriously and terminally ill patients to use and grow medical marijuana for personal use if their doctors recommend it? Is that strongly/somewhat oppose/support?

	TOTAL SUPPORTING	STRONGLY SUPPORT	SOMEWHAT SUPPORT	SOMEWHAT OPPOSE	STRONGLY OPPOSE	DON’T KNOW
REGION	65%	42%	23%	13%	15%	7%

Support margin in the Rockford Metro: 65% - 28%

QUESTION: Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for your state legislator if he or she votes for legislation to allow seriously ill patients to grow and use medical marijuana for personal use upon the recommendation of a doctor? Is that much more/less likely?

	TOTAL MORE LIKELY	MUCH MORE LIKELY	SOMEWHAT MORE LIKELY	SOMEWHAT LESS LIKELY	MUCH LESS LIKELY	NO DIFFERENCE	DON’T KNOW
REGION	49%	26%	23%	10%	10%	27%	4%

More likely to vote for vs. less likely to support pro-medical marijuana legislators — margin in the Rockford Metro: 49% to 20% with 27% saying no difference and 4% unsure.

QUESTION: Some say allowing marijuana to be used for medical purposes sends the wrong message and encourages drug use. Others believe that marijuana can be regulated for medical use, and that the government should allow it for seriously and terminally ill patients when a doctor recommends it.

Which position do you agree with more: (ORDER ROTATED)

• Medical marijuana should be allowed to the seriously ill, or
• Allowing medical marijuana sends the wrong message?

	SHOULD BE ALLOWED	SENDS WRONG MESSAGE	NOT SURE
REGION	62%	26%	12%

NOTE: The Rockford Regional Poll was conducted in the following Illinois counties: Winnebago, Boone, Stephenson, Ogle and DeKalb.

Sticking Landlords With the Bill

Add comment March 10th, 2008

I caught up this morning with Rep. Harry Osterman, a Chicago Democrat spearheading legislation to make landlords pay for the cost of housing tenants when the landlord’s property is condemned.

Rep. Chuck Jefferson, D-Rockford, is co-sponsoring the measure, and the mayor’s office is backing it, as the Register Star reported this morning.

“If a municipality takes an action against a building with condemnation or makes a ruling on safety hazards, and the people are forced to vacate the building because it is deemed unhealthy by the municipality, many of these people don’t have the means to go and find another place to live. They’re going to go live with their relatives,” Osterman told me by phone.

“So what we want to do is have this individual slumlord or landlord, who’s responsible for this building, pay to move someone to another place to live. If for whatever reason that (landlord) is not able to do that, we would enable municipalities to front-end those costs, and then to try to get them back through a civil action against the landlord. The bottom line is what we’re trying to do is if there are renters, who through no fault of their own are in a building that is in disrepair and has been condemned, we want to make sure they have some kind of protections.”

Osterman’s bill:

The landlord would need to pay each displaced tenant $2,000 per unit or three times the monthly rent, whichever is greater, plus the tenant’s deposit, interest and prepaid rent, within seven days of getting a condemnation notice, under the bill.

Critics complain that the measure doesn’t recognize the possibility that a tenant may have caused the damage to a rental unit, prompting the city to condemn it. Osterman said he is prepared to negotiate a provision making that clear.

“What I have committed to do is to work with them to strengthen that provision, to very explicitly and flesh out in an amendment, that this is not the tenant’s fault, but this is something due to the inaction of the owner,” he said.

Monday Morning Funnies

2 comments March 10th, 2008

As soon as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. Phone Call” ad invaded televisions across America, I could hardly wait for the weekend because I knew a scare-tactics ad like this nearly begged for a Saturday Night Live parody. And I was right.

Here is another edition of the Monday morning funnies:

(I can’t get the NBC video to embed properly on the blog, but you can watch it here. Warning: This skit does involve censored profanity.)

Here is Clinton’s controversial ad that started it all and that some say helped her snag Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island away from Sen. Barack Obama:

And of course, the Obama camp quickly came out with a rebuttal:

And now for the ironic twist: