Pot, Guns and Fake News
Sinclair’s WICS (Springfield, IL) is being called out for reporting “fake news.”
As of the first of the year, recreational cannabis is now legal in the state of Illinois. But, WICS said in a story that was posted online that you are going to have to choose between buying weed or buying a gun.
In their story, WICS wrote:
People in Illinois will soon be faced with an interesting dilemma, which is either to use cannabis or be able to buy guns. "You have to indicate that you are not a user of cannabis and it even says there, it uses the word unlawful but it says that medical or legal recreational use in your state is still unlawful," said Hanken.
No, ISP will not revoke your FOID card just because you use recreational cannabis. But don't expect federally licensed gun dealers to sell you a weapon.
"If they scan a card it's going to put you into the system. So, if I run your name with your adddress and everything, it's going to pop it up that you are buying marijuana and my guess is you're not going to be able to buy a gun," said Doug Schmidgall, Owner of Aim 2 Shoot.
So, the station was basically saying, if you choose to purchase cannabis, whether recreational or medicinal you will be put in a database of people who are not allowed to purchase a weapon.
But if you read the bill on cannabis, you will see that is simply not true and you will not be put into a database because no such database can be created by state law.
It now appears that WICS has deleted the story in which they gave false information.
Here is a screenshot of the story they posted and now have deleted: