Lawmakers in Evanston, Illinois, have launched a $10 million reparations program for local African-Americans — funded by profits from legalized pot.
When recreational marijuana, sold from state-licensed dispensaries, becomes legal in Illinois next year, the sales taxes reaped in Evanston will be applied to housing and education incentives to address the lingering effects of slavery, proponents told the Evanston Review.
The legal-weed tax “will be invested in the community it unfairly policed and damaged,” Alderman Robin Rue Simmons said.
Evanston, with a population of 75,000, is 17 percent African-American. The city expects to generate up to $750,000 a year with its marijuana tax.
The idea of paying reparations to the descendants of slaves has been a hot topic among Democrats running for president in recent months. But an October poll found only 29 percent of Americans in favor of the concept.
