Lincoln, Illinois | City of Lincoln, Illinois/Facebook
Lincoln, Illinois | City of Lincoln, Illinois/Facebook
The Lincoln city council recently updated the city code regarding various aspects of the legality of cannabis.
During the Jan. 3 city council meeting, the council discussed an ordinance to amend their city code regarding cannabis. John Hoblit, the city attorney, has been working with Lincoln Police Chief Joseph Meister to come up with new guidelines for the city's fairly outdated cannabis code. The proposed code includes conditions of possession, including the age limit of 21 and up, with criminalizes anyone below that age limit possessing cannabis. There were also requirements for transportation: it must be in a vacuum-sealed container to be transported, otherwise, it is a violation.
The updated city code will impose a maximum possession amount of 30 grams with anything over the amount considered illegal regardless of the age of the individual. There is also a condition regarding Illinois residents versus those who are out-of-state residents with Illinois nonresidents only being allowed to possess half the amount allowed for a resident.
Most of the other changes to the city code were minor language changes or a reorganization of aspects. The big changes to the code were to align the city’s code to state statutes and update them to reflect changes in the law within the past few years. The ordinance also gives local officers more discretion in citing violators, not having to arrest offenders if they do not feel it necessary.
"So what we did was we mimicked that as well and found a penalty that we believed was a fair penalty for a minor offense such as that," Meister said at the meeting. "In state law, it's a Class A misdemeanor, which is an arrestable offense: a person goes to jail for any amount of cannabis transported illegally in a motor vehicle. This ordinance gives our officers more discretion to cite and release and not necessarily have to arrest somebody for a minor offense like that. Kind of like illegal transportation of alcohol [which is] a ticket, not everybody just goes to jail for that."
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