Illinois medical marijuana card wait time

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Juke52

Well-Known Member
Spellchek said:
To be fair, there is a law in Illinois that governs the counting of days, and it does give an extension due to the weekend in this case. Leave it to the lawyers to think of everything. (5 ILCS 70/1.11 in case you were curious.)



No friend, it's the exact same law. Feel free to search the full text of Public Act 100-1114 and you'll the text I quoted right in there. Bottom line: there's no provisional access without the rulemaking, and the rulemaking hasn't happened yet. It's just that simple and I can't explain it further without using a bunch of legalese.
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I feel the need to say this every time I comment on this subject, but again, I am not a lawyer :) If you have expertise in this area that I don't, I'll gladly defer to you on this.

Having said that, I have read this particular law pretty closely. The language I quoted from the law (and I do recognize that it is the same law, but a different section) doesn't seem to me to allow for exceptions or exemptions or conditions. It actually looks to me like it was written specifically to head off any possible exceptions or exemptions.

"(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act..." means 'in spite of...', right? So this section would seem to specifically overrule any provision found anywhere else in the law that could be perceived as conflicting with it.

Also, the word "shall" is critical. According to U.S. Legal Definitions (https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/shall/), "shall" is legally defined as "An imperative command". That seems definitive. If the language was "can receive", or "is eligible to receive", or "may receive" or "will qualify to receive", that would seem to subject it to other conditions that may or may not be outlined elsewhere in the statute. But there are no other conditions that must be met that are mentioned in this section that would delay the implementation of this part of the law.

Am I misinterpreting this? If so, how? Not for the sake of argument - I'm genuinely curious.
 
J

Juke52

Well-Known Member
Jasshan said:
They only needed to have HOW they are going to do that in by 12/1. .
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I've been going over the language of the law trying to find where or how I'm misinterpreting my reading of it, and I think I finally found it.

Section 62, subsection H, which is also quoted elsewhere in this thread, states:

"The Department of Financial and Professional
Regulation and the Department of Public Health shall submit
emergency rulemaking to implement the changes made by this
amendatory Act of the 100th General Assembly by December 1,
2018. "

We're parsing this language differently. The fact that we are doing so suggests it could have been written more clearly.

You're seeing it as "shall submit emergency rulemaking...by December 1".

I'm seeing this as "to implement the changes...by December 1".

In other words, does the "by December 1" refer back to the clause immediately preceding it, which is "to implement the changes"? Or does it refer to the an earlier clause, i.e., "shall submit emergency rulemaking"?

If it was the "rulemaking" that was being referred to - it really should have been written as:

The Department of Financial and Professional
Regulation and the Department of Public Health shall submit
emergency rulemaking by December 1, 2018 to implement the changes made by this
amendatory Act of the 100th General Assembly.

But the way it's actually written, I think a case could be made that it's vague enough that my interpretation could be the right one. I'd argue that the period between the signing of the law on Aug. 28 and December 1 was intended to be the window that the state had to implement emergency rulemaking in order to provide provisional access "...by December 1."

Anyway, it doesn't matter, so I'm not going to worry too much about it. It's just a brain exercise at this point. Based on the state's actions, we already know how they view it, regardless of what the lawmakers may have intended when they wrote it.
 
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Newgrower84

Newgrower84

Active Member
Quit calling people!! Its just making everyone wait longer. They dont have separate employees to answer phones and to finish applications, so every time people call just to ask where are they at? When we already know they are working on the middle to the end of September. I would love to get my card sooner, but calling will not make it happen, in fact it could cause it to take longer, move to bottom of file type of stuff.
I can understand the impatience, it will come when it comes, we cant make them go faster no matter how bad we wish we could.
 
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J

Jasshan

Member
They are,did, have started implementing the law. I’m not disagreeing with you. Unfortunately getting everything in order and making sure everyone knows their part (according to the “how” they needed to have in by the first) is how it starts. Like I said. I’m sure everyone was moaning about more work, learning this, and having to do that all the way up until 5 o’clock on Friday. They didn’t hand out playbooks and assignments to everyone involved and tell them “be ready team so we can get that first online app that comes in on 12/1 some provisional cannabis. Ready. Break.” If that’s how the state did things I’d had my card 2 months ago
 
M

Myk63

Well-Known Member
Spellchek said:
To be fair, there is a law in Illinois that governs the counting of days, and it does give an extension due to the weekend in this case. Leave it to the lawyers to think of everything. (5 ILCS 70/1.11 in case you were curious.)
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As I said, one law for them, another law for us. Showing me the law doesn't change that.
The law did not say on December 1st. It said by December 1st.
Sure they could wait until December 3rd. Just like Rauner waited until a couple hours before the law would've passed without his signature before he signed it. When dealing with sick people delays for the sake of delays is a dick move.

Why do you think it's reasonable to make people suffer for another month? Obviously the lawmakers didn't think making them suffer was reasonable so they came up with provisional access.
This has been law for 3 months. They've known the bill was going to be law for 6 months. 30 more days, that's the ticket to get IDPH to figure out how to send out form letters like they already do for renewals.
 
M

Myk63

Well-Known Member
Newgrower84 said:
Quit calling people!! Its just making everyone wait longer. They dont have separate employees to answer phones and to finish applications, so every time people call just to ask where are they at? When we already know they are working on the middle to the end of September. I would love to get my card sooner, but calling will not make it happen, in fact it could cause it to take longer, move to bottom of file type of stuff.
I can understand the impatience, it will come when it comes, we cant make them go faster no matter how bad we wish we could.
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Although I agree, you're talking to a few people out of about 6000 in the system. If the state didn't want people to call they would have updates in some form. Pay me $100-$250 and I'll get back to you is begging for people to call even if it wasn't about treatment, relief or cannabis.
 
S

Spellchek

Active Member
Myk63 said:
Why do you think it's reasonable to make people suffer for another month?
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That's a loaded and unfair question because you know I never said any such thing. I've never defended the current 90-day approval process, and along with you, I've been eagerly anticipating provisional access and scouring to learn more about it.

But at the same time, I understand that provisional access is a big step for the program (bigger than I think you give credit for) and will take some time to roll-out smoothly. It's not just about the patient and the dispensary. There's the record-keeping imposed by the Act. There's HIPAA. There's law enforcement training -- let's avoid having provisional access patient face arrest because a LEO didn't know the new rules. There's other Illinois agencies involved in the program. And there's the whole opioid program at the same time.

If you want to call IDPH evil for taking a few weeks to roll-out provisional access, that's your right. But I don't see it. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." IDPH may not be efficient or enthusiastic about the program, but neither they nor I are trying to make people suffer. Jeez.
 
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Hullj18

Well-Known Member
Newgrower84 said:
Quit calling people!! Its just making everyone wait longer. They dont have separate employees to answer phones and to finish applications, so every time people call just to ask where are they at? When we already know they are working on the middle to the end of September. I would love to get my card sooner, but calling will not make it happen, in fact it could cause it to take longer, move to bottom of file type of stuff.
I can understand the impatience, it will come when it comes, we cant make them go faster no matter how bad we wish we could.
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Most of us aren’t complaining th about the wait time, what frustrates us is the lack of information. It’s frustrating when you call and get told ‘it’ll be soon’ and then another person does and they say ‘it may be another 2-3 weeks.’

It’s a lack of knowledge about what is going on in general, how the process works, and then add in that laws aren’t being inacted in the right time frame. I agree, if you just got your card, or it’s been under 60 days, no need to call, but when it’s been 75 days and they say you won’t be approved for another 14, and then the card has to ship, it’s a tad bit annoying
 
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Juke52

Well-Known Member
Spellchek said:
...the current 90-day approval process...
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It's worth noting that we all seem to have accepted that 90 day process as part of the standard protocol at this point, when in fact there is no such process described in the law.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing in the law that refers to any processing deadlines between the state's receipt of an application and issuing a card. No minimum OR maximum allowable processing time. The 90 day waiting period seems completely arbitrary. And interestingly, it seems to have been around the same 90 day period both before and after the signing of the Aug. 28 amended version. Supposedly at that point the state got serious about things, added funding and staff to the office that deals with this, but the processing time doesn't seem to have changed.

I get the impression that someone, somewhere in the bureaucratic chain of command has OK'd slow-walking this whole affair, and three months seemed like a nice round number. And I definitely haven't gotten the impression that the people running the show consider cannabis as a medicine. They're treating us like a bunch of sneaky stoners who are trying to pull off a scam, so they're punishing us for it.
 
H

Hullj18

Well-Known Member
Juke52 said:
It's worth noting that we all seem to have accepted that 90 day process as part of the standard protocol at this point, when in fact there is no such process described in the law.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing in the law that refers to any processing deadlines between the state's receipt of an application and issuing a card. No minimum OR maximum allowable processing time. The 90 day waiting period seems completely arbitrary. And interestingly, it seems to have been around the same 90 day period both before and after the signing of the Aug. 28 amended version. Supposedly at that point the state got serious about things, added funding and staff to the office that deals with this, but the processing time doesn't seem to have changed.

I get the impression that someone, somewhere in the bureaucratic chain of command has OK'd slow-walking this whole affair, and three months seemed like a nice round number. And I definitely haven't gotten the impression that the people running the show consider cannabis as a medicine. They're treating us like a bunch of sneaky stoners who are trying to pull off a scam, so they're punishing us for it.
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My thing is that it just doesn’t make sense why they are going so slow, or why they would give us false info. If they said 90 days but that’s not a gaurentee, that would be fine. But we have proof that people who submitted their apps on 9/17 and before that, were approved, and that was last week, so unless they completely stopped and aren’t doing any more, then they should be onto later dates, close to the 17th.

Unless they don’t know that we know where they are at, and want us to stop calling, if that makes sense. I had a lady tell me last Tuesday, they were CLOSE to me, and now this guy says it’s 2, maybe 3 more weeks until they get to me? I think people would stop calling if they were just honest with us
 
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