The lines for cannabis sales in Illinois have stretched around the block. Shortages are common. Demand is better than expected. It could be a year before supply meets demand.

No wonder retail cannabis sales in January, the first month of sales, amounted to nearly $40 million. The $10 million in taxes puts Gov. J.B. Pritzker more than a third of the way toward his estimate of tax revenue for the first half-year of marijuana sales.

The tax haul for the state would have been larger, and weed investors would have grown even richer, had supply not run short.

And who are the investors cashing in on the Illinois weed bonanza? What kind of political contributions did they make? Did they have any unseemly business connections in their backgrounds to concern residents of the state?

Read the rest at chicagotribune.com

David Greising is the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, joining the BGA in 2018. For nearly a century, the BGA has fought for honest and effective government through investigative journalism and policy advocacy.

Greising’s career started at the City News Bureau of Chicago, with stops at the Chicago Sun-Times, Business Week magazine, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters. He was a co-founder of the Chicago News Cooperative and worked briefly as a consultant to World Business Chicago. Today, Greising writes on government issues in regular columns for the Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business.

Under Greising’s leadership, the BGA has played a key role in uncovering public corruption amidst the wide-ranging federal probe, starting with an in-depth report about Ald. Ed Burke’s conflicts of interest before the federal charges against Burke. The BGA also has exposed waste and fraud at O’Hare and the proliferation of corruption and poverty into Dolton, Lyons and other Chicago suburbs. The BGA’s policy team has led calls for ethics reform in Chicago’s City Council and in state government.