Illinois

Statewide: The future of marijuana policy; The winter blues

NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS | By Sean Crawford

Published January 13, 2022 at 2:09 PM CST

On this week's episode, we speak with Toi Hutchinson, a former state senator who also oversaw the start of recreational marijuana legalization in Illinois. She has now taken a job as CEO of the national Marijuana Policy Project. She talks about what she sees ahead for cannabis laws at the federal level.

January is a time when many struggled with seasonal depression and anxiety. A psychologist tells us it's worse during the pandemic.

Those stories and more on Statewide.

* Peter Medlin has a report on schools that have been forced to return to remote instruction and the impact it's having on students and staff.

* Natalie Krebs has the next segment in our series on COVID outbreaks in meatpacking plants.

* David Condos revisits how a Kansas community is still scrambling to deal with growing pains after a meatpacking facility opened there.

* Jane Carlson of TriStates Public Radio brings us the latest on a hospital closure in Galesburg and how another medical facility is trying to pick up the slack.

* Dana Cronin talks with a scientist at the Environmental Working Group about its tap water database. See how to check what's in your tap water here.

* Michelle O'Neill talks with representatives of two community colleges as enrollment has been falling at the schools.

Eric Schmid, St. Louis Public Radio’s Metro East reporter, uses an augmented reality app on Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022, during a self-guided tour at the Cahokia Mounds Historic Site in Collinsville, Ill. The historic site was the recipient of a $250,000 Digital Projects for the Public grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to develop the project.

* Eric Schmid with St. Louis Public Radio has details on new technology that lets visitors to Cahokia Mounds see the site as never before.

* Herb Trix reports on John Deere's collaboration with a small company to reduce harmful emissions from its equipment.

* Eric Stock of WGLT talks with Joan Hartman of Chestnut Health Systems in Bloomington about the demand for psychologists as people try to get through another difficult winter.

* Toi Hutchinson, the new CEO of the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project discusses what she helped accomplish with Illinois' recreational marijuana law and what could be coming at the federal level.