There were two things everyone asked me when I was first diagnosed with cancer: “Will you lose your hair?” and “Can you get medicinal marijuana?” The short answer to both of those questions was “yes.” But when it comes to the issue of medical cannabis in Illinois, nothing is as simple as a one-word answer. The application alone requires three forms of ID, a current photo, fingerprints, a background check, a five-page physician approval form, and a $150 fee ($100 for the application, $50 for the fingerprints). While I recently finished treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the symptoms of the disease and the chemotherapy continue for at least six months posttreatment. Here’s hoping my application gets approved, because lucky for me, Chicago’s first medical marijuana dispensary, Dispensary 33, is four blocks away from my house.
Maybe it’s my conservative midwestern upbringing, but walking into the open house, I had a lot of expectations that were immediately disproven. I thought the place might be hard to find and dingy, like some sort of drug den; it’s actually a modern, open space, in plain sight with clean lines, murals by Make and Company, and honeycomb-shaped display cases that give off the feeling of an Apple store. I expected a slew of recreational pot users to line up and see what they could get away with; the crowd was mostly patients asking the same questions I had about when they could start buying and what was going to treat their symptoms the best.
“I think the future isn’t ‘Are regulations going to become more lax?’” Park says. “I think the future is expanding the program to where people who need help are actually getting it.”
