Statewide: The future of marijuana policy; The winter blues

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.

Brian Munoz

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St. Louis Public Radio

* 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.