Less than two percent of IIllinois dispensary owners were Black or Latino and less than 25 percent were women as of last June, according to a leaked State of Illinois report. Following a wave of dispensary purchases since last summer, the number of minority and women owners could be even lower.
The report, dated September 30, 2020 with data as of June 30, 2020, was obtained by Springfield lobbyist Mark Peysakhovich, who distributed the document to a client email list last Friday morning. Peysakhovich refused to reveal to Grown In where he obtained the document, “FY2020 Adult Use Cannabis Program Annual Report – Dispensing Organizations” which was published by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR).
Asked for an explanation of why the report was withheld from the public, a spokesperson from IDFPR would only comment Friday morning to say that it was in the process of posting the document online, almost five months after it was published. The report can now be found online here.
State regulators are required to publish the annual report, according to the 2019 Cannabis and Regulation Tax Act.
The report also breaks down cannabis sales into five state regions, where contrary to many expectations, Suburban Chicago, outside of Chicago and Cook County, had more than double the sales in the city and Cook Suburbs.
