Chicago cannabis aficionados received a heady piece of news on 4/20 when the Cook County state's attorney's office announced that it would no longer prosecute misdemeanor amounts of marijuana. This affects thousands of Chicago residents, most of whom live in some of the city's most crime-heavy neighborhoods.
According to the City of Chicago data portal, the Chicago Police Department made 3341 arrests for possession of less than 30 grams of cannabis (the limit for a misdemeanor) from the start of 2015 through April 12. That's a lot of police activity for a relatively harmless amount of pot. Everyone knows that you can flip an ounce of dank, sweet cheeba for around $300 or $400, which isn't quite enough to fund any sort of successful criminal organization.
Even worse: The pot arrests are clearly more salient in the city's South and West Sides than the North Side. The map below shows the location of each one of those arrests:
If that map is a bit overwhelming for you, here's a trippy heat map of our city's systemic discrimination:
