Today Naperville held its annual State of the City address. As has been the case for many years, it was very well done. It was a great opportunity for City leaders to hear from their new Mayor and to say goodbye to a tremendous City contributor, Christine Jeffries, who recently retired and is moving to Florida.
Mayor Wehrli did a very nice job (yes the Watchdog was in attendance). All of our community’s who’s who were there…nearly 500 people came to enjoy the address. Sadly and embarrassingly, the strong show of support did not include the majority of our councilmen.
Thank you to Councilmen McBroom, Taylor, and Leong for showing support for the City that you represent. A hat tip to recent council candidate Meghna Bansal for making the event … she missed being elected by a biscuit and reminded attendees why she would have been, and likely will eventually be, a strong addition to the council dais. The best of Naperville’s council were in attendance today.
It was the entire “Left wing” of the dais who had better things to do than to support their new Mayor at this important annual tradition.
Maybe the Watchdog should give Councilmen White and Holzhauer a break. Both are so catastrophically disabled from their time in the military that for years each have claimed full exemptions from their real estate taxes. Maybe the 2 hour ceremony would have been too much?
Obviously the Watchdog is being facetious.
Is it really out of line to expect these elected leaders – who are handing us all their tax bills – to at least make appearances at what is arguably our City’s most important event?
Maybe it was the important Facebook work that Holzhauer tends to which explains his absence. Over the last week or so, he’s treated our community to posts about everything from his looming divorce (apparently he’s separating from his wife and four kids) to his low blood cell counts and mental health issues. Why Holzhauer thinks any Naperville resident needs or desires such personal information is a mystery. Most would prefer him to skip the dramatic theatrics and just do the job he was elected to do.
The Watchdog’s detractors have alleged a partisan bent is influencing recent Watchdog articles. Maybe the Watchdog is merely following the direction of our City leadership, namely that all City issues are now to be viewed through a partisan lens. The Watchdog believes it’s safe to assume that had a high profile Democratic Party event been taking place today, every single one of the missing Leftist caucus members would have made it there.
Is there even a question?
Voters, we know how this movie ends. Demand that your officials put community first and stop treating our council dais as a mini-Springfield or mini-Washington, D.C.
They should focus on the great City that they have been elected to represent. Not their own political ambitions and partisan glad handing.
“They should focus on the great City that they have been elected to represent. Not their own political ambitions and partisan glad handing.”
I assume you’re including McBroom’s stunt from the dais about undocumented people being bussed to Chicago and his follow up panty toss fan girl letter to Gregg Abbott in this, right?
You are totally missing the point of the post. The Chamber’s State of the City is a wonderful non-partisan event where the Mayor delivered a great address discussing the successes of, and challenges facing, Naperville. It is a non-partisan event attended by hundreds of community leaders and businesspeople. I attended yesterday and haven’t missed one in years. I find it amazing that any current City Council member would choose not to attend, absent a medical emergency or some unavoidable work conflict.
You’re assuming that they had a choice. Do you know why the council members who missed were not there? Assumptions only perpetuate political narratives.
I did mention that prior May have unavoidable work conflicts or medical situations that may prevent them from attending. However, that being said, the State of the City is a pretty significant event and I would think that City Council members would clear their calendars and try to attend (unless, of course, they are trying to make a statement).
As a commenter below mentioned, “State of Naperville” isn’t really for the residents of Naperville. It’s a back-patting, for-those-in-the-know event.
But almost every weeknight and weekend, there are actual community-focused events throughout our city, and that’s where leaders engage in the real work–the work that doesn’t get recognized or publicly lauded. It involves listening to residents’ concerns and celebrating their successes.
These community events aren’t as glitzy as “State of Naperville.” Some might even put council members outside of their comfort zones–but that’s how leadership is demonstrated and community is built.
As someone who regularly attends such events, I can tell you that the council members being chided for missing a mid-afternoon spectacle are the ones who show up to support Naperville’s citizens over and over and over. They are doing the WORK.
Thanks for keeping us informed – you do a great service.I vote Democratic and am embarrassed for my counsel men/ women who did not show up for this meeting. Expect next column to be on our property tax bills!
In this post you make the following statement : “They should focus on the great City that they have been elected to represent. Not their own political ambitions and partisan glad handing.”
From your earlier unsupported speculation that the “Left Wing” of the council was pursing partisan political ambitions instead of doing the job they were elected to do since they did not attend the State of City speech like Leong, Taylor and McBroom. The reader is lead to conclude “Left Wing” is uncommitted while the “Right Wing” is committed.
The funny thing about history is it proves the adage that actions speak louder than words. A little over a year after being elected to council for the first time, Leong and Taylor decided to follow their political ambitions and run for District 81 and District 41 State Representatives. Leong lost and Taylor withdrew but their actions demonstrated their lack of commitment to their council positions.
Both Leong and Taylor are running for reelection but their past actions suggest this is just a stepping stone in their career. The people of Naperville deserve complete commitment from our elected officials to serve their terms.
Lastly, since two of my recent replies have not been posted by Watchdog Admin, I am copying all my future replies to my Facebook page Community Forum hosted by Mark Urda along with a link to your posts to make sure they are seen.
We only allow posts that speak to the article…you’ve sent in comments that were more in the vein of feet stomping or pointless accusations. Keep it to the article and it gets approved.
For the record, the last post that you did not post simply pointed out that your admission of having favorites showed that you had a positive bias to them but you concluded I was biased. Not whiny or food stomping just a simple factual observation.
In your post, you said that “It was the entire “Left wing” of the dais who had better things to do than to support their new Mayor at this important annual tradition.”
This event was held in the middle of the day, correct? Being a stay-at-home mom, owning one’s own well-staffed business, or having the ability to work from home is a luxury that not every council member has. Your assumption that missing this event was a choice by the “left wing” is absurd and incredibly privileged–as well as revealing of your “partisan bent.”
You’ve also revealed your lack of decency and humanity, a new low. In the span of just a few paragraphs, you mocked one council person’s transparency about personal struggles (which you referred to as “dramatic theatrics”) and ridiculed two who have selflessly served our country (who you sarcastically referred to as “catastrophically disabled”). What’s truly “sad and embarrassing” are blogs like these that hurl unfounded character attacks at our leaders and continue to divide our community. Naperville is better than this.
None are stay at home moms and if they don’t have time to do the job why are they up there? They are paid representatives of our City. Their attendance at important events like this should be expected…especially this one.
Ms. Bruzan Taylor’s bio on the Council website says she is “a non-practicing attorney focused on raising her family.” Sounds stay-at-home-y to me. Not that there’s anything at all wrong with that.
Yes and she was one of the three who made it there…
A hour ago you said none are stay-at-home moms. You now agree she is. And therefore she has more flexibility to attend events than others. Which is one of the points I believe the commenter was trying to make. Also there are plenty of other events throughout the year where less than 50% of Council attend, including those with the same ideology as you. If you’re claiming that none of those events carry the same weight as this one – I’ve never even heard of this event and I’ve been here 20 years.
Much ado about nothing….State of the city is not for the people of naperville. It’s for local politicians, wannabe politicians, those politically connected and other Naperville elites. Some of us have jobs and have to work during the middle of the day. Also can’t afford events like this. Should be done as a free event so the regular people of naperville can attend.
First I will point out that you claim the reason for not posting some comments is because they were personal attacks that do nothing to address an issue and further rational discussion. It is worth noting that this entire article is nothing more than a personal attacked on members of the council, particularly Ian and Benny. Not surprising since these two members of council seem to have a permanent residence in the Watchdog’s head, rent free.
Second it has always been a policy of the city council to avoid having a large enough number of council members attend any event that it would constitute a quorum. A quorum of council members at any event would give the appearance of violating the state’s Open meetings act statue and could have seriously legal consequence for all council members in attendance.
You are only kidding yourself if you seriously believe that in the current atmosphere of political divisiveness the entire council showing up for any event at the same time would not be exploited by divisive politicians in our community to push their own political agendas.
City Council members need to stay focused on the business of running the city and not engaging in events, solely for appearances sake, that would create more opportunities for distractions during council meetings resulting is less working getting done.
There is literally nothing you will not chime in about if there is a criticism of the left. The original post was spot on, and without fail, out comes the dissembling and tap-dancing from you. You comments added nothing to the debate other than you didn’t like it. Think about not posting.
The State of the City has historically been the most important city event outside of the city council chambers. Over 500 Naperville stakeholders, including the leadership from the school districts, park district, library, townships and counties. All nine city directors are present and much of the management from police and fire are present. Community leaders are also present, including; Endeavor Health (Edward Hospital), North Central College, Naperville Development Partnership, directors and board members from many of Naperville’s social service organizations and many of our religious leaders. Hundreds of members from the business community attend as well, including representatives from most of Naperville’s major employers as well as family owned businesses, new business owners and future business owners.
The SOTC does not violate the open meetings act because like many local events where more than three council members attend, no city business is discussed by the members. This event is a speech, so only one person is communicating. The SOTC is held over the lunch hour so people who eat lunch can attend over their lunch break.
The SOTC event is both a celebration of Naperville’s accomplishments and a look at the challenges that lay ahead. It is a time for all council members to reflect on our past and unite on our future goals. Believe it or not, council members have common goals for the city…often times different paths to get there, but a common end goal. Importantly, unlike the state of the union speech, the SOTC is not a political event and never has been. There are no criticisms or jabs thrown, no policy discussions, just compliments and gratitude of the council and community leaders and setting common goals for the city’s future. The last SOTC followed tradition where Mayor Wehrli recognized and appropriately thanked all of the council members for their contributions.
Historically all members of the Naperville City Council have attended the SOTC and up until a couple of years, usually the entire council attended unless there was a major conflict or personal reason, but by in large they all attended as elected officials representing the city. In my view, attending the SOTC honors and respects the duties of office. There are so many events that our Mayor and counsel are expected to attend and most of them find the time to attend them even though their attendance is not expected, but the SOTC is different. They should all attend.
Over 500 stake holders at $50 per person (or whatever it cost). The true stakeholders are the citizens. If no city business is being discussed between council members and these “stakeholders” then it’s a show and nothing more. Should be a free event for the citizens to attend and not a fancy luncheon for the naperville elites, politicians, wannabe politicians and political junkies. It’s just hobnobbing.
I agree with Jim on this. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years and have never heard of this event before. I asked several of my neighbors and Naperville friends–and none of them had ever heard about it before either. It’s a luncheon–not a meeting or policy-setting function. While I understand the celebratory nature of the event and acknowledging the city’s accomplishments, it is an overstretch to claim this was an orchestrated move–and an unfair one as well. Has anyone asked the council members why they weren’t there? They don’t all work in Naperville–in fact, at least one works in Chicago. They may have had work deadlines or work/family obligations–any variety of competing issues. Making assumptions about their motives does only one thing: widen the divide in our city. So, please, for the sake of Naperville, STOP.
I did not say the STOC event violated the OMA. I said it can give the impression it does.
As you stated major stakeholders (business leaders, other government officials-both elected & appointed, community leaders, etc) are in attendance. All of these people hobnobbing and networking, its hard to believe actually city business does not get discussed by anyone at anytime during this event.
So if you have more than three council members seated at the same table, or together in a group, how do you prove actually city business is not being discussed? Again it is about appearances.
And the appearance of governance impropriety emboldens comments like the ones the “North Naperville Liberation Front” is constantly posting about “secret”, “small group”, “close-door”, etc meeting were local leaders “hatch plots” to manipulate city resources in a manner that does more to benefit themselves (their political agenda) then the citizens of Naperville.
Again I am not saying this happens. Just that truly good leadership thinks about these things (unintended consequences) and how they can impact the ability of the organization they belongs to do its job, the reason for the organization existing.
As to tradition. Prior to you the mayors never made a big deal out of the SOTC event, which is why, traditionally, local print media, broadcast media and social media outlets gave this event like cover if at all. Despite your efforts to turn the SOTC into some kind of major city gala, this is still true today. Efforts that include implying anyone that does not attend is in someway dishonoring the city, its workers and it residents and doesn’t really care about the city, has no pride in their city, etc.
Pressuring and a veiled attempts to bully people (elected or otherwise) into attending this event, as this article by the watchdog does, is what truly dishonors this event and the people involved, not the people who do not attend for whatever reason. This is the true break with Naperville traditions.
Yes city accomplishments and achievements are highlighted and discussed, but its just as much about “stakeholders” sharing information, ideas, plans, etc for the upcoming year with each other and networking (private business, city business, political business, etc). How do you prove none of this results in events over the next years that does not (negatively or positively) impact the city or its residents? And would not such an impact be at the very least a moral or ethical violation of the Open Meetings Act?
The growing hostility between political factions in our community hurts our community on many levels. In the last election Republican organizations did not invite all of the candidates to event they hosted (as they traditional did as they did do the first year you ran for office). This only make elections more partisan, more about party membership & loyalty, then about open, informative elections based on discussions of the challenges & issues the city faces and helps provide voters with the information they need to make an informed voting decision.
This article, by the new management of the watchdog, also violates the tradition of this page, under the old management, of not becoming a partisan outlet. Of sticking as much as possible to discussions of the city’s issues and not the people working to addresses these challenges based on which party they might be affiliated with; of not playing the political blame game, which does nothing to resolve any problem and serves only to complicates solving problems.
I did not say Pradel did not take this event seriously. What I said was he did not make a big deal out of promoting it the way you did.
In fact the event Pradel did make a big deal out of every year was the Naperville Marine Corp Ball. Pradel did more to make citizens aware of this event in a single year then he did in all this time as mayor with respect to the SOTC address.
And again I did not say the SOTC event violates the OMA I say it can give the appearance of doing so. All of your assurances about it no happening went out the window the minute you admitted in your post this sometimes happens. Council member rebuffing any member that violates OMA at one of these events does not change the fact that the violation happened. This is why the old policy of not have a quorum of council members at any one event is a good idea and a good reason, not a bad one.
As several posters have pointed out the state of the city address is viewed more as an elitists (snob) event involving a bounce of people that what to reaffirm to themselves they are among “the who’s who” in Naperville. You can say all you want about this event being about celebrating the city’s accomplishments and achievements over the past year but clearly the PR department for this event has failed to get most citizens to believe this.
Ian Holzhauer is one strange guy. Who puts their personal information out there about their marriage and health. The guy just screams narcissist. Wonder if he will try to get both of his homes exempt from property taxes?
Jim,
Respectfully, the STOC under Mayor Pradel was always a big deal. He wore a tuxedo and top hat to deliver the address. I’m told he would practice it for months. Hundreds of people attended, much like today. I have attended the SOTC long before I was involved with government and I can say from personal experience, it was an important event that was rarely missed by community leaders.
Regarding the appearance of violating the OMA; again, I respectfully disagree. Councilmembers get together in large groups and privately on a regular basis. Many of them are good friends. I hosted the entire council at my home several times over the years and I can tell you we always respected the rule on OMA. And, if someone inadvertently crossed the line, they were called out by a fellow councilman. I’m not saying violations don’t occur, they obviously do, but law abiding councilmembers are seen together publicly very often and I don’t think it appears inappropriate in any way and most certainly is not an excuse to avoid an important city event.
I agree with other posters…Most citizens of Naperville aren’t even aware of this event. If you truly want to make naperville citizens more connected to the city and maybe even each other, then make a big deal about the event and have it at the Central Park bandstand. The current format now reeks of the ole boys (and girls) club and only for those who think they are the who’s who of naperville. The only ones who seem to care are the politicians, ex-politicians and the elites in town.
Steve Chirico should be ashamed for pushing his marijuana agenda through City Hall. See the article below from the WSJ. Just awful what he did.
What You Aren’t Hearing About Marijuana’s Health Effects
Bertha Madras, a leading expert on weed, outlines the science linking it to psychiatric disorders, permanent brain damage, and other serious harms.
By
Allysia Finley
May 10, 2024 3:13 pm ET
Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days—more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes.
While marijuana use remains a federal crime, 24 states have legalized it and another 14 permit it for medical purposes. Last week media outlets reported that the Biden administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous Schedule III drug—on par with anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine—which would provide tax benefits and a financial boon to the pot industry.
Bertha Madras thinks this would be a colossal mistake. Ms. Madras, 81, is a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School and one of the foremost experts on marijuana. “It’s a political decision, not a scientific one,” she says. “And it’s a tragic one.” In 2024, that is a countercultural view.
Ms. Madras has spent 60 years studying drugs, starting with LSD when she was a graduate student at Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry, an affiliate of Montreal’s McGill University, in the 1960s. “I was interested in psychoactive drugs because I thought they could not only give us some insight into how the brain works, but also on how the brain undergoes dysfunction and disease states,” she says.
In 2015 the World Health Organization asked her to do a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses. The 41-page report documented scant evidence of marijuana’s medicinal benefits and reams of research on its harms, from cognitive impairment and psychosis to car accidents.
She continued to study marijuana, including at the addiction neurobiology lab she directs at Mass General Brigham McLean Hospital. In a phone interview this week, she walked me through the scientific literature on marijuana, which runs counter to much of what Americans hear in the media.
For starters, she says, the “addiction potential of marijuana is as high or higher than some other drug,” especially for young people. About 30% of those who use cannabis have some degree of a use disorder. By comparison, only 13.5% of drinkers are estimated to be dependent on alcohol. Sure, alcohol can also cause harm if consumed in excess. But Ms. Madras sees several other distinctions.
One or two drinks will cause only mild inebriation, while “most people who use marijuana are using it to become intoxicated and to get high.” Academic outcomes and college completion rates for young people are much worse for those who use marijuana than for those who drink, though there’s a caveat: “It’s still a chicken and egg whether or not these kids are more susceptible to the effects of marijuana or they’re using marijuana for self-medication or what have you.”
Marijuana and alcohol both interfere with driving, but with the former there are no medical “cutoff points” to determine whether it’s safe to get behind the wheel. As a result, prohibitions against driving under the influence are less likely to be enforced for people who are high. States where marijuana is legal have seen increases in car accidents.
One of the biggest differences between the two substances is how the body metabolizes them. A drink will clear your system within a couple of hours. “You may wake up after binge drinking in the morning with a headache, but the alcohol is gone.” By contrast, “marijuana just sits there and sits there and promotes brain adaptation.”
That’s worse than it sounds. “We always think of the brain as gray matter,” Ms. Madras says. “But the brain uses fat to insulate its electrical activity, so it has a massive amount of fat called white matter, which is fatty. And that’s where marijuana gets soaked up. . . . My lab showed unequivocally that blood levels and brain levels don’t correspond at all—that brain levels are much higher than blood levels. They’re two to three times higher, and they persist once blood levels go way down.” Even if people quit using pot, “it can persist in their brain for a while.”
Thus marijuana does more lasting damage to the brain than alcohol, especially at the high potencies being consumed today. Levels of THC—the main psychoactive ingredient in pot—are four or more times as high as they were 30 years ago. That heightens the risks, which range from anxiety and depression to impaired memory and cannabis hyperemesis syndrome—cycles of severe vomiting caused by long-term use.
There’s mounting evidence that cannabis can cause schizophrenia. A large-scale study last year that examined health histories of some 6.9 million Danes between 1972 and 2021 estimated that up to 30% of young men’s schizophrenia diagnoses could have been prevented had they not become dependent on pot. Marijuana is worse in this regard than many drugs usually perceived as more dangerous. “Users of other potent recreational drugs develop chronic psychosis at much lower rates,” Ms. Madras says. When healthy volunteers in research experiments are given THC—as has been done in 15 studies—they develop transient symptoms of psychosis. “And if you treat them with an antipsychotic drug such as haloperidol, those symptoms will go away.”
Marijuana has also been associated with violent behavior, including in a study published this week in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Data from observational studies are inadequate to demonstrate causal relationships, but Ms. Madras says that the link between marijuana and schizophrenia fits all six criteria that scientists use to determine causality, including the strength of the association and its consistency.
Ms. Madras says at the beginning of the interview that she was operating on three hours of sleep after crashing on scientific projects. Yet she is impressively lucid and energized. She peppers her explanations with citations of studies and is generous in crediting other researchers’ work.
Another cause for concern, she notes, is that more pregnant women are using pot, which has been linked to increased preterm deliveries, admissions of newborns into neonatal intensive care units, lower birth weights and smaller head circumferences. THC crosses the placenta and mimics molecules that our bodies naturally produce that regulate brain development.
“What happens when you examine kids who have been exposed during that critical period?” Ms. Madras asks. During adolescence, she answers, they show an increased incidence of aggressive behavior, cognitive dysfunction, and symptoms of ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorders. They have reduced white and gray matter.
A drug that carries so many serious side effects would be required by the Food and Drug Administration to carry a black-box warning, the highest-level alert for drugs with severe safety risks. Marijuana doesn’t—but only because the FDA hasn’t cleared it.
The agency has selectively approved cannabis compounds for the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut or Dravet syndrome, nausea associated with chemotherapy for cancer, and anorexia associated with weight loss in AIDS patients. But these approved products are prescribed at significantly less potent doses than the pot being sold in dispensaries that are legal under state law.
What about medicinal benefits? Ms. Madras says she has reviewed “every single case of therapeutic indication for marijuana—and there are over 100 now that people have claimed—and I frankly found that the only one that came close to having some evidence from randomized controlled trials was the neuropathic pain studies.” That’s “a very specific type of pain, which involves damage to nerve endings like in diabetes or where there’s poor blood supply,” she explains.
For other types of pain, and for all other conditions, there is no strong evidence from high-quality randomized trials to support its use. When researchers did a “challenge test on normal people where they induce pain and tried to see whether or not marijuana reduces the pain, it was ineffective.”
Ms. Madras sees parallels between the marketing of pot now and of opioids a few decades ago. “The benefits have been exaggerated, the risks have been minimized, and skeptics in the scientific community have been ignored,” she says. “The playbook is always to say it’s safe and effective and nonaddictive in people.”
Advocates of legalization assert that cannabis can’t be properly studied unless the federal government removes it from Schedule I. Bunk, Ms. Madras says: “I have been able to study THC in my research program.” It requires more paperwork, but “I did all the paperwork. . . . It’s not too difficult.”
Instead of bankrolling ballot initiatives to legalize pot, she says, George Soros and other wealthy donors who “catalyzed this whole movement” should be funding rigorous research: “If these folks, these billionaires, had just taken that money and put it into clinical trials, I would have been at peace.”
It’s a travesty, Ms. Madras adds, that the “FDA has decided that they’re going to listen to that movement rather than to what the science says.” While the reclassification wouldn’t make recreational marijuana legal under federal law, dispensaries and growers would be able to deduct their business expenses on their taxes. The rescheduling would also send a cultural signal that marijuana use is normal.
Ms. Madras worries that “it sets a precedent for the future.” She points to the movement in states to legalize psychedelic substances, for whose medicinal benefits there also isn’t strong scientific evidence. Meantime, she says it makes no sense that politicians continuously urge more spending on addiction treatment and harm reduction while weakening laws that prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place.
Her rejoinder to critics who say the war on drugs was a failure? “This is not a war on drugs. It’s a defense of the human brain at every possible age from in utero to old age.”
Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
Your lengthy comment has nothing to do with the post, and Steve Chirico is no longer in office. That being said, the state legislature and Governor in Springfield made cannabis legal for recreational use in our state, not former Mayor Chirico.
First of Chirico, as mayor did the right thing in supporting cannabis dispensers in Naperville. Remember this was not just supported by Chirico but a clear majority of council members. The benefits have been more then expected with no significant negative repercussions (no where close, not even in the same ball park, as the narrative anti-cannabis activist were promoting).
As to the medical and psychological issues surrounding cannabis use, this was discussed in great detail during all the meetings and public discussions on this issue before this action was taken. But to basically summarizes the results of these discussions, yes, cannabis, if abused, like any drug (including alcohol and nicotine) can cause psychotic breaks. The most resent scientific studies, however, show this only happens in people with a very specific genetic make up (a very small percentage of the general population), which is why Naperville has not be overrun by cannibals crazed psychotics since this ordinance was passed.
In short the attitude that cannibals is anymore dangerous to society, and its youth, then any other schedule 3 ( the schedule the FDA is planning to move cannabis too), alcohol or nicotine is simply not the majority view of the scientific community that has studied these drugs. The idea that making possession of cannabis a crime and thus turning high school students into criminals, with criminal records, to protect them from the “dangers” of this drug is ludicrous as best.
This is a good point. The city was looking at how best to manage a situation and benefit our community as a result of state governance. Legal Cannabis was coming to Naperville without or without these dispensers.
Personal attacks like yours are the greatest proof of the relevance of my posted comments.
Rather then engage in a rational discuss of the points in my comments, as people like Chirico does, you attack me personally.
This implies you simple can not come up with a rational argument to refute my statements, as people like Chirico do. So instead, out of frustration, you attack me personally.
Sadly a common reactions by politically polarized people today. People who have come to believe the party line is the only line. This attitude among voters has lead to some of the greatest tragedy in human history. Blind loyalty to anyone is dangers but blind loyalty to a organization is the greatest danger.
Organizations are national born chameleons designed to easily change. Just look at the two major parties in this country, their positions 50 years ago, a 100 years ago, on issues like organized labor, civil rights, women’s rights, etc compared to today.
Party leadership is more interested in taking up positions that they believe will make them the most populous party and thus win elections then they are in morality, ethics, etc. If you believe otherwise you are wearing blinders.