626 groups now qualify for upcoming lottery to win marijuana store licenses in Illinois after applications are rescored

The number of applicants qualified for the upcoming lottery for new marijuana store licenses in Illinois jumped to 626 — with 97% qualifying for social equity bonuses — as a result of a rescoring of their applications and lowering the qualifying score, state officials announced Wednesday.

The number marks a huge increase from the 21 applicants who were given perfect scores to qualify for a license lottery last year.

“You wanted as many people as possible to at least have a chance, so we’re very excited about making such a big jump,” said Toi Hutchinson, the state’s senior adviser for cannabis control.

Those who qualified for Thursday’s lottery for 55 licenses came from a pool of 937 unique applicants who submitted more than 4,500 applications, Hutchinson said. They qualified by earning at least 85% of the maximum score — rather than having to have a perfect score, as occurred in the initial scoring round last year.

The state law that legalized recreational cannabis last year gave a 20% scoring bonus to social equity applicants. They were defined as people from areas disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs, such as the South and West sides of Chicago; those who had been arrested or convicted of minor cannabis offenses, or had family members with such a record; or those who hired 10 or more people from those areas.

Of those who qualified, 589 will also qualify for a subsequent “justice involved” lottery, which will exclude those who qualified by merely hiring people from areas designated as disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.

A third lottery will then be held for applicants with tied scores. In all, 185 new retail licenses are to be awarded.

The licenses were required by law to be awarded more than a year ago, but were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and by problems with the scoring by consultant KPMG. Applicants complained and filed suit, objecting that identical exhibits were scored differently.

In response, state officials delayed the process to rescore applications, with four rounds of supplemental deficiency notices to more clearly spell out what applicants had to do to fix problems with their applications