Tax on cannabis to fund $10m in slavery reparations

As drug becomes legal, 3 per cent levy on sales will benefit African American community of Illinois city

A CITY in Illinois has announced it will create a reparations fund for its African American community through a new tax on marijuana sales. Recreational use of the drug will become legal in the state from January and officials in Evanston, which is 12 miles north of Chicago, have voted to approve a 3 per cent tax on the sales to fund a local reparations programme.

The tax is expected to generate between $500,000 and $750,000 a year for the fund, which will be capped at $10million over the next 10 years.

The city’s lawmakers will meet next week to determine exactly how the fund will be distributed, but one idea being proposed is for the money to go to schemes such as skills training or financial assistance for down payments on a home in the area.

The money will be available to all of the city’s black residents, rather than merely those who can prove they had an ancestor who was enslaved, as long as they can meet residency criteria.

The move comes amid a renewed national debate over whether the federal government should pay reparations to descendants of former slaves.

This summer, the House of Representatives held a hearing on a bill to establish a commission to study how a restitution scheme would work, and several Democratic presidential candidates have indicated support.

However, polling suggests the majority of the American public opposes monetary reparations, while President Donald Trump and other senior Republicans have criticised the idea.

Robin Simmons, the alderman who proposed the reparations bill, said the hope was to “implement funding to directly invest in black Evanston”.

Ms Simmons said the source of the reparations fund was fitting, given the federal government’s “war on drugs” campaign disproportionately affected African Americans for several decades.

African Americans accounted for 71 per cent of all those arrested for marijuana possession in Evanston during the past three years – a trend which mirrors the national picture.

Ms Simmons added that the reparations plan would also help African Americans who have been priced out of the city by high property taxes and racially biased lending practices.

Census figures show Evanston’s black population fell from around 22.5 per cent in 2000 to under 17 per cent in 2017.

Not all of the city’s lawmakers support the measure. Alderman Thomas Suffredin voted against the proposal, arguing that more detail was needed on how the funding will be dispensed.