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Ornithologist Mike Baltz explores the history and mission of the Cache River Watershed.

It took Illinois’ new cannabis industry less than three years to become a billion dollar business.

When marijuana was legalized for recreational use in 2020, demand for the product and people qualified to work with it soared. As the industry continues growing, companies are looking to hire people who have some cannabis knowledge – and more of those businesses are even sponsoring college courses.

That workaround is crucial since marijuana is still federally illegal, and there’s a risk schools that receive government funding could lose it by working with the actual product on campus.

Spoon River College in Macomb launched its cannabis horticulture course in 2022 with help from Nature’s Grace and Wellness, a company based in nearby Vermont, Ill. Nature’s Grace approached Spoon River about starting a course and provided a $100,000 grant to help students offset the roughly $3,000 cost.

The company existed for years as a medical cannabis provider, but the size of the operation more than quadrupled when recreational cannabis became legal. Tim O’Hern, the company’s chief operating officer, said he knows students who enroll in the course will take it seriously, and that’s good for future hires.

“It demonstrates a lot to us that, hey, that person is specifically seeking out a job in cannabis and they have a degree of passion and interest in the field,” he said.

Ascend Wellness Holdings, a multi-state operator with a large grow facility in Barry, Ill., works with Western Illinois University in Macomb.

“You can be the Rockefeller of cannabis right now if you position yourself correctly,” said Shelby Hennings, an assistant professor of sustainable horticulture at Western, which recently launched a cannabis production minor.

“I think anybody that gets in and does that, especially with a degree that gives them a calling card to say, hey, I’ve got something more to offer than the standard person, that’s what this program gives them.”

People have a lot of class choices in the Western program. Horticulture 357, Cannabis Production, is one of three core classes students have to take. But they can also choose from electives such as hydroponic plant production and crop biotechnology.

The production minor also requires a three-hour practicum, where students volunteer at facilities like those at Ascend or Nature’s Grace. Hennings said the idea is to integrate students into an actual operation as they’re getting ready to graduate with the skills the cannabis industry wants.

“Here is one right now, trained, and you can cherry pick these people,” Hennings imagines telling potential employers.

Sam Piscitello of west suburban Bartlett hopes to be one of those people. The 24-year-old is one of Henning’s students and, like many, said he grew up hearing about the ills of marijuana without hearing of its potential benefits.

Once Piscitello saw the benefits, he knew he wanted to be part of the industry.

“I just hope people actually are in this industry for the plant as well,” he said. “It’s not just the money – people have to care about the quality of the plant instead of just pushing out product.”

Piscitello was considering well-known cannabis programs at colleges in Michigan and California but chose Western to stay closer to home.

Western also offers a cannabis and culture minor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Students in the program have to take a class called the Anthropological Study of Cannabis, and can choose from electives such as Contemporary Moral Problems; From Magic Mushrooms to Big Pharma; and Religion, Magic and Shamanism. The program is also planning a study abroad trip to Amsterdam in 2025.

Dan Schmalshof of Macomb, a member of the Illinois Independent Craft Growers Association, has been working to open his own craft grow facility while continuing to work with educators at Western and Spoon River.

“I would like to train people in this industry, whether it be on the dispensary side, or the craft side or the grow side or horticulture side, because I do have access to people like Shelby Hennings,” he said.

Elsewhere in the state, Southern Illinois University has a Cannabis Science Center available to students in the intensive controlled-environment plant production program; the University of Illinois has a cannabis production and management certificate at its main campus in Urbana; City Colleges of Chicago offers a certificate in Applied Cannabis Studies; and Joliet Junior College just launched certificate programs to gain cannabis job skills.

Despite the delays and setbacks that have beset Illinois’ cannabis industry, it’s been booming.

The state reported more than $1 billion in revenue in 2022 and officials are confident those numbers will improve this year with more dispensaries slowly opening, along with smaller operations introducing small batch, possibly more expensive “craft” products into the market.

Cannabis sales dipped in January and February this year, but March revenue numbers from the Illinois Department of Professional and Financial Regulation show a slight rebound – even from out-of-state buyers, some of whom no longer need to cross the river from St. Louis to get to dispensaries in Sauget, Collinsville or Fairview Heights.

As time passes, more aspects of our lives become dependent on technology. With this increased dependence also comes more opportunities for online dangers such as cyber scams. Even though the public is more intelligent about online risks, people are being affected more than ever before.

According to the FBI’s most recent internet crime report, there were more than 800,000 complaints filed in 2022. This may be fewer than 2021, but the losses exceeded $10 billion, an increase of $3 billion from the prior year. Special Agent Thomas, an FBI agent working with the Springfield division on criminal matters who withheld his first name for security reasons, says scams have always been around but their constant evolution is their biggest asset.

“So these scams have kind of evolved over time and as long as there have been criminals there have been scams. But the way technology has developed now has basically the efficiency for scammers to dupe victims. A lot of it is done over various means of communication,” Thomas said.

These forms of communication could include call, text, or email but Randy Mathis, the assistant to the chief of community information at the Carbondale Police Department, says the most common scam they see in their area happens over the phone.

“For the most part nowadays, it’s usually by telephone. We still do hear of occasions where somebody is contacted through the internet. We do sometimes have text messages that people respond to. Sometimes when they are online their computer gets overtaken because they have clicked accidentally or saw something that was a good opportunity and it turned out to be a scammer, well they will actually hijack your computer and force you to pay them in order to do that. But a lot of times we see things done by phone,” Mathis said.

As the forms of communication have evolved, Agent Thomas says these scammers have become far more efficient and skilled at what they do.

“I feel like with the onset of you know the advancements in technology, the fraudsters can reach multiple victims with one click now and fraudsters have become increasingly skilled at convincing victims they are a legitimate person or organization through these various forms of communication,” Thomas said.

While the formats scammers use have evolved over time, their tactics remain very similar. Mathis says most scams try to pressure people into making fast, rash decisions.

“They want you quickly, now, let's go before you have a chance to fully think things through and then to fully realize that oh, I should have known better. A lot of times that is what you get is the feeling of, ‘I should have known better’ but that is where that emotion comes in. Emotion helps us not to stop and think about things because we were afraid or we were excited and we are not always thinking,” Mathis said.

Carbondale police have had recent run-ins with scams of this nature. In March, multiple businesses received calls from someone claiming to be law enforcement and demanding they pay money or risk facing legal action. Mathis says that the police will never ask for money over the phone.

“Legitimate law enforcement agencies or government agencies from the IRS down to your local law enforcement will never ever ask you for money over the phone. The only difference with that would be if we ever had to call on behalf of somebody and they had bond money you would come to the police department. We never accept anything over the phone,” Mathis said.

Police demanding money over the phone is just one of the many warning signs that are present in scam attempts. Agent Thomas says the list of warning signs is extensive.

“So, quite often the scammers will operate overseas and English is not their first language. So, look out for grammar or spelling errors. Also, keep an eye out for social media profiles that look brand new with little content or few friends. Never click on a random message with a link in it or any unsolicited direct messages. You know, be wary of requests to send money online via gift cards, wire transfers, payment applications, or requests to invest in cryptocurrency. Also, keep an eye out for posts or ads promoting a deal that seems too good to be true,” Thomas said.

With so many of these warning signs out there, agent Thomas says the FBI’s main plan for combating scams is by educating people about them. Mathis says the Carbondale Police Department is using multiple methods to try to educate as many people as possible.

“We have Facebook. We also have the Next-door app that we are starting to post things on. So every once and a while we’ll put some things out as far as letting people know there are scammers going on or we will directly address it if like in the case of where we had our Facebook post where somebody tried to scam by going into the messaging. We also will be able to go out to businesses or organizations and talk to them about scam prevention,” Mathis said.

Mathis says the focus stays in education because oftentimes local departments don’t have the money or time - or sometimes the ability - to track down scammers.

“A lot of times it comes down to the ability to investigate. We at the Carbondale Police Department don’t have really great resources to take our investigation outside the city limits. If it’s something that we can’t call somebody and get that information from, usually something like that we would pass on to another entity that would be able to handle that,” Mathis said.

Some of these entities may be the attorney general's office, the secret service, or the FBI. With so many cases being sent to these organizations from across the country, many may be lost, which is why Mathis and Agent Thomas say education is the key to combating online scams. To learn more about how you could help protect yourself from potential scams, visit the FBI website.

Jake West grew up in La Porte, Indiana, not far from Lake Michigan. His mother, Julie West, said he was always friendly to others.

“He was just kind and he brought other people in,” West said. “He was a type of kid that if someone wasn't included, he was going to make sure that child was included. That’s just how he was, from the time he was little.”

As an athlete, he passed all of his physicals and he didn’t show signs of underlying heart problems. He was a healthy kid — until one day, he wasn’t.

When Jake was 17, he collapsed after running a play on the football field. School staff did CPR and student trainers jumped in to help out. But he died on the field in September 2013 from an undetected heart condition.

West wonders whether her son would still be alive if his school had a plan for the use of automated external defibrillators – more commonly known as AEDs – which send an electric shock to someone’s heart to help keep them alive.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear signed a bill into law in March requiring schools to keep portable AEDs in every middle and high school building and at school-sponsored events. At least eight other states, including Indiana, Missouri and Ohio, have introduced similar legislation mandating schools have emergency cardiac response plans, which may include access to AEDs and a plan to use them in response to incidents of sudden cardiac arrest.

West is advocating for Indiana’s AED bill, which would require all Indiana public, charter and private schools to make AEDs accessible at extracurricular activity practices and performances, including athletics, marching band and theater, since students have an increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest at these events.

“Every child should come home from school,” said West, the founder of the Play For Jake Foundation, which works to prevent sudden cardiac arrest deaths and provides heart screenings for youth. “They should not die at school. And so schools need to be prepared for that.”

But mandating these devices is a complicated decision.

A football player’s emergency sparks national conversation 

West believes people are more aware of sudden cardiac arrest than ever before after millions of people saw the Buffalo Bill’s Damar Hamlin go into sudden cardiac arrest on live television earlier this year during an NFL game. Hamlin’s heartbeat was restored on the field using an AED.

But many school districts across the country are not privileged like Hamlin to have a team of medical professionals on the sidelines. Some don’t even have athletic trainers. And the longer someone takes to use life-saving devices, the greater the chance of them dying. A person’s chance of survival declines about 10 percent every minute defibrillation is delayed, according to the journal Sports Health.

Advocates for AED legislation say there is a way to help save these lives, at least while on school grounds — learning CPR, requiring an AED to be accessible during athletic practices and implementing an emergency cardiac response plan.

Getting more people trained in using AEDs is crucial, said Dr. Kristin Burns, a pediatric cardiologist with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

“One of the most effective ways to get at this problem is to train children, young adults, bystanders — anyone who is around to feel comfortable jumping in and doing something and doing it quickly,” Burns said.

The machine guides users step by step, and provides written instructions for those who are hard of hearing, and verbal commands in different languages. Some AED advocates have said it’s so easy to use, anyone who can understand directions can operate the machine, including a child.

Should a potential liability outweigh saving a life? 

More than 20 states currently have laws providing guidance for keeping AEDs and/or response plans on school grounds, or mandate them. Those requirements vary by state.

The chances of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest for children are low. Estimates for the number of U.S. children who experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year range from 7,000 to more than 20,000. But such incidents can be fatal when they occur, with research showing survival rates as low as 11 percent.

Defibrillators cost roughly $1,000 to $3,000, and some schools may need more than one. Plus they have to purchase cabinets to store the device, carrying cases and other supplies to operate them. Then schools, with budgets and staffing already stretched thin due to COVID-19 pandemic labor shortages, must designate someone to take responsibility for these devices.

But those aren’t the only reasons that keep school districts from implementing AED protocols. It’s also the liability.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Should we get AEDs if we don't have to,’” said Richard Lazar, president of readiness systems with the AED Law Center. “And I mean, at a binary level it is, in most places, less risky to not have AEDs than it is to have AEDs.”

Recently, there have been multi-million lawsuits across the country after students died from cardiac arrest while on campus. In some cases, the facilities had AEDs, but failed to use them. And these scenarios could deter some school districts and lawmakers.

“What if they didn't have AEDs in the first place,” Lazar said. “Would they still be, you know, facing a lawsuit?”

A similar question was raised during an Indiana House Education Committee meeting in March. Chairman Rep. Bob Behning (R-Indianapolis) asked if a liability issue could be raised if a law is passed requiring schools to access an AED within three minutes, but someone is unable to do so within that time limit. The bill has since been amended to “establish a goal of responding within three minutes,” rather than requiring that specific response time.

That’s why AED advocates have been insistent that it’s not just about having the device on the premises. School districts would be required to have an emergency cardiac response plan so they know where a defibrillator is located and how to use it.

School districts across the country practice drills for fires, school shootings and inclement weather. Now advocates want the same preparation for sudden cardiac arrest and arrest deaths.

When Jake West died, there was an AED on campus. But it was in the coaches’ office and not easily accessible.

“I don't judge or blame anyone in Jake's situation, because we just didn't know any better,” West said. “But now we do.”

Indiana State Sen. Linda Rogers (R-Granger) introduced similar AED legislation last year, which passed unanimously out of the Senate Family and Children's committee, and the full Senate. But lawmakers ran out of time to hear the bill in the House education committee during the short session last spring. Now West is waiting to see if it will pass this year.

Initiating a cultural shift 

In order to make a dent in the number of sudden cardiac arrests, advocates say there has to be a cultural shift around how communities respond to these events.

Although this legislation would require AEDs and emergency response plans in Indiana schools, it wouldn’t require them in other public places. Rogers said the devices are already in many other facilities, and the proposed bill is still a step in the right direction to prevent another young life from being taken from their family, friends and community.

For Martha Lopez-Anderson, preventing sudden cardiac arrest deaths has been her mission for roughly two decades.

“I was blindsided,” said Lopez-Anderson, advocacy director with Parent Heart Watch, a national organization that wants to end sudden cardiac arrest deaths in youth by 2030. “I thought I did everything right. My son had a well-child checkup 30 days before [he died]. And according to his pediatrician, everything was great. Well, clearly it wasn't.”

Lopez-Anderson’s 10-year-old son Sean died from sudden cardiac arrest in 2004 in Ocoee, Florida. She said there’s been an uptick in interest for AEDs and cardiac response plans since Hamlin went into cardiac arrest. But she’s noticed too many groups working in silos and not together.

Last week, The Smart Heart Sports Coalition was announced to provide $1 million for CPR education and AEDs. The new collaboration is between national athletic associations such as the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA, and national health organizations like the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association.

AED advocates like West want more education centers to become nationally recognized Project ADAM Heart Safe Schools — facilities that have implemented a sudden cardiac arrest plan, an AED, training, drills and an emergency response team.

Across the U.S., 4,129 schools were identified as “heart safe” e from 2004 through 2021, said Dr. Adam Kean, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

More schools likely qualify for this designation, he said, but they are working with a different organization or none at all.

Since beginning the Indiana program in 2020, only five schools have received the heart safe designation, out of the state’s roughly 1,800 public schools.

For now, West wants lawmakers to approve the bill before more lives are lost on school grounds.

“Without a doubt, lives will be saved,” West said. “Jake would still be here – my son would be 26 today here on Earth, not in heaven.”

Contact WFYI education reporter Elizabeth Gabriel at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter: @_elizabethgabs.

This story comes from Side Effects Public Media — a health reporting collaboration based at WFYI in Indianapolis. We partner with NPR stations across the Midwest and surrounding areas, including Iowa Public Radio, WFPL in Kentucky, Ideastream Public Media in Ohio and KBIA and KCUR in Missouri.

Copyright 2023 Side Effects Public Media. To see more, visit Side Effects Public Media.

Pat Broz has been serving meals to students in the Mehlville School District outside of St. Louis for almost 30 years. On a recent day at Oakville Elementary School, the bouncing kindergarteners sliding trays toward the register were all dressed up for school pictures. She complimented their outfits as she rang up their lunches.

Yet this year, Broz said fewer students have been coming through her line compared to when school meals were free for all students.

“There was a lot more kids,” she said. “Everybody wanted breakfast and lunch.”

Her observation bears out in national data. When the program was free last year, schools served more than 80 million more meals compared to the year before the pandemic.

Broz has noticed something else — when she rings up the kids she can see that they owe money for meals they haven’t paid for. In fact, students in her district have about four times more meal debt than they typically had before the pandemic.

These changes would be worrying in just one district, but they’re trends that are multiplying in school districts across the country.

This school year started with an abrupt switch from pandemic-era free meals to a paid system. As the months have gone by, school districts across the Midwest are reporting signs that families might be struggling to afford school meals.

Now lawmakers from the state level to the highest branches of the government are looking for ways to fix a growing problem. A handful of states have passed universal free meals for students and many more are considering similar legislation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently proposed an expansion to a free meal program, to try to feed significantly more students at high-need schools.

Signs of a problem

Now that families have to pay for lunches again, and low-income families have to apply to qualify for free or reduced price meals, schools are seeing cracks in the system.

The Mehlville School District is back to serving about as many meals as it did before the pandemic, but the number of students who qualify for free and reduced price meals has dropped from 30% to 26%, said Katie Gegg, director of school food and nutrition services in the district.

“Which doesn't sound like a lot, but with a district of 10,000 students, that's 400 students that might need the support,” Gegg said.

Just like those small changes add up to a lot of kids in the Mehlville School District, changes all across the country are adding up too. Preliminary data on the national lunch program shows schools served almost 130 million fewer free or reduced price meals in the fall of 2022 compared to the same time period right before the pandemic.

This year school officials say meal debt is reaching levels they have never seen. A recent survey from the School Nutrition Association found school districts had more than $19 million in unpaid meal debt, with the Midwest and Great Plains reporting the highest rates of lunch debt.

In the Sioux City Community School District in Iowa, students currently have about $22,000 dollars in debt. Rich Luze runs nutrition for the district and said the government could have handled this change better.

“Giving it for two years, or whatever, and then abruptly stopping it, instead of phasing it down … that could have helped families prepare to readjust and rethink,” Luze said.

School nutrition professionals and experts say a few trends have led to fewer families qualifying for the subsidized or free meals. Many families didn’t know they needed to reapply after two years of automatic free meals. Gegg in St. Louis also said the application can be confusing, especially for the many families in her district whose first language is not English.

On top of that, a few years of rising wages could have pushed some families out of the program. To get free meals this year, a family of four has to make less than $36,000 dollars a year. Although the USDA adjusts that number for inflation, food and housing prices are increasing, said Crystal FitzSimons, a director for the Food Research and Action Center.

“Those place a tremendous amount of stress on a household food budget and household budgets overall,” FitzSimons said.

Policy solutions

Policymakers are looking at these changing numbers and searching for ways to get closer to the pandemic-era free meals.

California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico have all passed legislation to make school meals free for all kids. Other states have passed temporary legislation and many more are considering similar policies.

The Biden administration is also looking for solutions. The USDA proposed a new rule to expand something called the Community Eligibility Provision. It allows schools and districts with a lot of high-need students to serve free meals to all of their kids. The USDA wants to lower the threshold of high-need students from 40% to 25%, allowing more schools to qualify for the program.

“We're providing greater flexibility, more participation in the program, resources that take a little of the pressure off,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, while announcing the plan at a school in Greeley, Colorado.

Before the pandemic, about one in three school districts in the U.S. were already serving free meals to all students through community eligibility. FitzSimons says this proposal could bring even more in.

“This is a really wonderful thing, because it increases the number of schools that can opt to offer free meals to all their students,” FitzSimons said. “... but it doesn't actually increase the amount of federal funding that the school would receive. So we're still hoping that maybe Congress would put in additional funding.”

President Joe Biden requested $15 billion dollars over the next 10 years in his 2024 budget to fund expanded access to the Community Eligibility program. The administration says this would expand the program to an additional 9 million children.

Because states or schools currently have to fund these programs themselves, not all eligible districts choose to participate. In the U.S, about 75% of eligible schools chose to adopt the program last school year and some of the states with the lowest rates of adoption are in the Midwest.

In Nebraska, about 12% of eligible schools took part in the program last year, the second-lowest rate in the U.S.

Nebraska’s legislature has multiple bills to try to implement universal free school meals. Like some other states that have sought to do this, the policies try to incentivize more school districts to sign up for the community program, to maximize the amount of federal funding schools receive.

State Sen. Eliot Bostar, a Democrat who represents part of Lincoln and sponsored one of the bills, said the biggest hurdle in his state will be the price. The state legislature’s fiscal analyst estimates the policy will cost more than $55 million in its first year.

“It's my responsibility to convince my colleagues in the state legislature that this is a worthwhile investment for Nebraska to make in its students and its families,” Bostar said.

Bostar said he thinks the free meals during the pandemic demonstrated the value of a program like this.

“It's difficult to have a family these days, it's expensive,” he said. “And so anything that we can do to make it a little bit easier to lighten the load or ease the burden is worthwhile.”

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues. Follow Harvest on Twitter: @HarvestPM.

Copyright 2023 KCUR 89.3. To see more, visit KCUR 89.3.

WSIU's Jennifer Fuller talks with Carbondale City Manager Gary Williams

WSIU's Jennifer Fuller chats with the Host of "The 21st," Brian Mackey.

WSIU's Jennifer Fuller talks with SIU's Bob Baer and Eclipse Chaser Mike Kentrianakis about their experiences with the 2017 solar eclipse, and their expectations for 2024.

The Southern Illinois Irish Festival is this Saturday, April 29th at Turley Park from 10am to 6pm. Leah Lerner spoke to Thomas Grant about the upcoming festivities and you can hear the conversation in the link above.

The family friendly event will offer live music all day, food and pints along with a special brew just for the festival. There will be contests for kids that will judge the most freckles or the most read-headed kid. Adults can enter the limerick contest, the hairiest legs or the contest for the best Irish costume. Take pictures with a giant leprechaun and hear bagpipes from different countries.

A special memorial tent will pay tribute to Bryan Kelso Crow, host of Celtic Connections. Hear music from Celtic Connections and remember Bryan's contribution to the SI Irish Festival, Celtic Music and more.

Find additional information about the Southern Illinois Irish Festival on their Facebook Page.