Illinois has a program called R3, which stands for restore, reinvest, and renew, that is funneling funs made from marijuana services into paying for public schools in the state, according to Ganjapreneur.
In total, about $858,669 has been allocated so far. This money is going towards legal aid for students, helping incarcerated youth back into society, career coaching, reproductive education, and more programs to help students.
“R3 is so important to me because I felt that it was critical that if we were going to be legalizing a product that has been used for the last 80 years to penalize largely Black and brown people, it was incredibly important that we took some of the resources of the sale of this product and begin to reinvest it in repairing some of those same communities that had been torn down by the war on drugs,” said State Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth, who aided in the creation of the R3 program.
And that six-figure amount is only what has been allocated for public schools. In total, the program garnered about $31 million of funding for the state, and they expect the number to potentially raise to $65 million in the next year.
