South Suburban Residents Line Up For First Day Of Legal Pot Sales

WORTH, IL — Happy days were here again for thousands of south suburban residents who began lining up before dawn outside the Windy City Cannabis Club, which had just been granted “same site” adult use cannabis state licenses mere hours before legal recreational marijuana sales began New Year's Day.

The Illinois Department of Finance and Professional Regulation announced 11 more “same site” adult-use cannabis licenses were issued to existing medical cannabis dispensaries on New Year’s Eve, including Windy City Cannabis’s locations in Justice, Worth, Posen and Homewood. Nu-Med on Chicago’s North Side was also granted a license just under the wire.

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Pending the approval of local municipalities, the recreational licenses allow those existing medical dispensaries to open second sites strictly devoted to recreational marijuana sales. The first “second site” license was granted to Rise-Joliet, an adult-use recreational dispensary. Other existing medical marijuana dispensaries included in the state’s “eighth round” announcement on Tuesday are in downstate Anna and Harrisburg, Morris, Urbana, Peoria and East Peoria.

Anticipating approval of its adult use licenses, Windy City Cannabis advised its medical customers on Facebook to pre-order before Jan. 1 to ensure that product was available when the marijuana prohibition was officially lifted. Windy City Cannabis’s four south suburban medical dispensaries have been in operation since early 2016.

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Thousands of people happy to no longer be breaking the law lined up on the historic “Legalization Day” outside Chicagoland dispensaries to legally purchase cannabis flower, gummies, chocolates and other marijuana products. Many waited three to four hours in line.

In a bit of preemptive strategic marketing, Joey’s Red Hots at 11500 S. Western Ave. in Chicago’s Morgan Park neighborhood delivered hot dogs to everyone standing in line outside Windy City Cannabis’s Worth dispensary.

Some former black market recreational weed customers at Chicago-area dispensaries eager to purchase clean, quality product for the first time without breaking the law expressed “sticker shock” after they got a taste of the heavily-taxed recreational product. A pre-rolled joint was going for $15 to $18 with taxes, according to news reports. Customers were also limited in the quantity they were able to buy, as Illinois’s cannabis industry works to meet increased public demand. Some dispensaries reported running out of flower, the smokable, trichome-covered part of a female marijuana plant.

By 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, Windy City Cannabis announced on Facebook that it was cutting off the lines to purchase recreational cannabis at its four dispensary locations due to long wait times and dwindling inventory. An employee closing up the Worth location Wednesday evening said the shop still had bud.

Over in Romeoville at the Veralife dispensary, a man who gave his name as Matt told Patch he was more interested in the increased safety of legal marijuana purchases.

"Yeah you pay a little bit less on the black market now," he said. "But just buying it legally makes me feel better as a man with a mortgage, a wife and a kid. ... You know where it's coming from and what's in it, and that's really important."