No good reason to ban pot shops downtown

If recreational pot shops will be good enough for the neighborhoods, they’re good enough for the Loop.

We can’t agree with the idea of banning recreational marijuana dispensaries from downtown, which Mayor Lori Lightfoot has proposed to keep the area “family friendly.”

Lightfoot’s zoning ordinance for pot sales would ban dispensaries from an “exclusion zone” stretching from Oak Street to Ida B. Wells Drive, and from Lake Michigan to LaSalle Street and the Chicago River.

But there’s no good reason for that. Every part of our city ought to be made and kept safe and family friendly, not just the Loop.

Plus, a recent study from Colorado, where recreational pot became legal in 2014, should go a long way toward dispelling fears that pot shops are destined to become neighborhood nuisances, magnets for crime, loitering and other problems.

The study analyzed crime data in Denver from 2013 through 2016 and found that having a dispensary in the neighborhood caused crime to decline by roughly 19 percent. The study, conducted by researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, was published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics.

The decline was likely due to the presence of more police and private security guards patrolling in the area surrounding dispensaries, one of the study’s co-authors said.

Chicago must make sure that no dispensary, in any part of town, turns into a seedy dive. The way to do that is through strict regulation and enforcement, not a ban that protects one neighborhood over the rest.

Especially a ban that makes bad financial sense for a city with an $838 million budget gap.

There’s no logic in prohibiting pot shops — or casinos, for that matter — from downtown.

That’s where the big money will be, including cash from out-of-state tourists.

While we’re at it, the Illinois Legislature should rework a provision in the state recreational pot law that allows businesses to permit customers to smoke pot even if they can’t smoke a regular cigarette.

In any establishment — including bars — in which smoking tobacco is prohibited under the Smoke Free Illinois Act, smoking pot should be banned, too.

Second-hand smoke is second-hand smoke.

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