With fewer than 4,000 approved patients, the medical marijuana business inIllinois is off to a slow start.
While neither state regulators nor the medical marijuana industry track the number of employees who were former law enforcement officials, The Associated Press has identified no fewer than 17 in Illinois, many of whom have outsized influence – from a trustee of the state’s chapter of the Fraternal Orderof Police to one-time undercover narcotics officers.
“Who better would you want to oversee your compliance than a cop?” said Scott Abbott, a retired Illinois State Police colonel paid to help a company adhere tothe state’s strict laws and regulations at two dispensaries. The pull of such post-police jobs extends well beyond Illinois, such as Washington state and Colorado, where marijuana is legal for everyone over 21.
Industry members in Illinois and beyond say the state is unusual in the degreeto which former law enforcement officers are not just working security but taking hands-on roles with patients and leading businesses– even with the uncertain future of a four-year pilot program that expires in 2017 and has received lukewarm support from first-term Gov. Bruce Rauner.
There’s likely no better example than Terrance Gainer, a former Chicago homicide detective, Illinois State Police director, assistant police chief in Washington, D.C., U.S. Capitol police chief and U.S. Senate sergeant-at-arms. Other players in Illinois include retired Will County Circuit Judge Robert Livas,co-founder of a company licensed to open two Chicago-area dispensaries who was once named judge of the year by the Illinois State Crime Commission.
Another is a former Chicago-area assistant state’s attorney who handled gangcrimes and now is vice president of a company that owns a dispensary. There’s also an ex-Cook County prosecutor-turned– general counsel of PharmaCannis, the state’s single largest pot provider with four dispensaries and two indoor growing operations.
The law enforcement ties run especially deep in Collinsville, where Abbott is joined by a dispensary manager who also spent more than two decades withthe highway patrol. Their commute is familiar–the soon-to-open HCI Alternatives dispensary islocated next to the state police regional headquarters.
Former law enforcement officers proliferate in the states that pioneered the medical marijuana and legal marijuana businesses. A Seattle-based medical marijuana investment firm lured Pat Moen, a 10-yearDrug Enforcement Administration official, to join it in 2013.
“It’s been incredibly rewarding,” he said, estimating he’s spoken with more than 100 current or former law enforcement officers about making a similar career transition.
“This is a mainstream product sought my mainstream consumers.” Ben Percy,general manager of Trinity Compassionate Care Center in Peoria, switchedcareers after a 27-year stint with the Illinois State Police that included an assignment on a drug interdiction team that patrolled Interstate 55, which connects the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.
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