Cannabis became legal in Illinois on Jan. 1, 2020 for recreational use. The city of Evanston plans to use the tax revenue to create a reparations fund that addresses historic discrimination against African-American residents. The city’s Black population has been in decline, falling from 22.5 percent in 2000 to 16.9 percent in 2017. The goal is to compensate for redlining and other government and private- sector activities that discriminated against Black people. No other city in the U.S. has created a reparations fund of this kind, and it could become a model for other cities.
