Growth op

In the first 10 months of sales, more than US$800 million worth of cannabis has been purchased in Illinois. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters Saturday that the boon in sales will prevent the city from laying off 350 employees as she looks to pass her ‘pandemic budget,’ reports the Chicago Sun-Times. Illinois struggles to keep up with recreational demand, still moves almost US$40M of cannabis ‘A greed rush’: Illinois cannabis customers face sticker shock at cash register Illinois’s legal cannabis sales reach US$3.2 million on first day “After many productive conversations, we have come to an agreement to avert any layoffs of city workers in the 2021 budget,” Lightfoot and Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said in a joint statement. The city is estimating that future cannabis revenues will reach US$15 million in the corporate fund, and allow the city to “bond against” those earnings. Lightfoot, who said sales have “gone through the roof,” called the US$15 million estimate conservative. A source told the Sun-Times that the bonding option was “tough to do,” as Lightfoot’s budget already includes US$3.7 billion in refinancing, but was a better option than layoffs. In January 2020, Illinois became the eleventh U.S. state to legalize recreational cannabis. The state sold more than US$3 million worth of weed on the first day and more than US$40 million in the month of January, placing it second behind only California for the highest sales by a state in its first month of legalization. “The successful launch of the Illinois’ legal cannabis industry represents new opportunities for entrepreneurs and the very communities that have historically been harmed by the failed war on drugs,” Toi Hutchinson, Illinois’s cannabis czar, said in a news release. Illinois adds a 10 per cent sales tax to cannabis products…

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Source : Chicago avoids laying off 350 city employees because cannabis sales have “gone through the roof”

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