Illinois hosts lottery specially for those who are kept away from the industry |

Illinois will launch a new lottery program specifically for the six applicants who failed, so they now have another chance to win and run their own recreational cannabis businesses. This official new lottery was announced last Friday and the new market is already full of opportunities.

According to officials commenting on the new lottery process, those who wrongly failed to stand a chance in the first three lotteries this summer (lotteries that issued 185 new licenses each) have another chance. The new licenses are officially approved by state law, which allows a total of up to 500 new licenses.

While no licenses are guaranteed to applicants who have been wrongly denied, the digital lottery is intended to be a fairer system than the original lottery, and the goal is to restore the chances of winning that should have been originally.

According to Toi Hutchinson, the chief cannabis advisor to Governor JB Pritzker, “clerical supervision of data entry” led to the errors in the former lotteries. These and other problems in the licensing system have delayed the official issuing of licenses by more than a year.

This new announcement came when Illinois also announced the 51 winners from the previous three lotteries. However, official licensing for these winners is still delayed as there are currently seven court cases pending that could affect who will actually be awarded at the end of the process. Cook County Judge Moshe Jacobius has even gone so far as to order the state not to issue licenses until it decides on a case involving applicants and the evaluation process.

Illinois is struggling with the licensing process

A total of 937 companies submitted 4,518 applications last year. However, the problem arose when only 21 of these applicants achieved the perfect score required to qualify for the first lottery. Those who lost then complained that the scoring carried out by consultant KPMG gave different applicants different ratings, even if the same information was added. Other problems with the scoring system were also identified.

To address this problem, the state passed a law that would create two more lotteries to offset the problems with the first. With this lottery system, applicants only had to score 85 percent or better to qualify. However, applicants still complained about this lottery round, saying that the process benefited white, politically connected, and wealthy individuals as it allowed unlimited application attempts for those who could afford the $ 5,000 registration fee multiple times.

Hutchinson admitted there was a problem with the industry being largely white-owned, but also claimed that Illinois outperforms other states when it comes to obtaining licenses for minorities or applicants for social justice. A total of 79 new licenses were issued in August, 43 percent of which went to black companies.

She also claimed that with each step, regulators are detecting more mistakes and correcting them, which helps make the process fairer and more equitable. She claimed the process was a “marathon, not a sprint”.

However, she admitted that it was a marathon that lasted a while.

“It was painful to see how long this took,” she said. “In the further course this could get better from year to year.”

It remains to be seen if that’s true, and if this new lottery round works better for applicants, but it’s clear that Illinois isn’t giving up when it comes to perfecting the process.