The debate over medical marijuana legalization in Wisconsin is “not going to go away,” and there’s hope it can be resolved this session, top Republican leaders say.
While there’s still serious skepticism about the state enacting broader adult-use marijuana legalization in 2025, as the Democratic governor again requested in his latest budget request, recent comments from GOP leaders signal that medical cannabis reform is on the table.
“I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think that marijuana and THC products aren’t present in the state of Wisconsin when they are readily available over state lines, so I think we need to come to an answer on this,” Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August (R), told Spectrum News 1. “I’m hopeful that we can.”
There have been repeated attempts to legalize medical marijuana in the legislature over recent years, including the introduction of legislation from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) that called for a limited program facilitated through state-run dispensaries. That proved controversial among his Republican colleagues, however, and it ultimately stalled out last year.
“I do not want to see state-run dispensaries,” Sen. Dan Feyen (R), the assistant majority leader, told Spectrum. “The state should not be in the business of selling basically anything except for state-run things. Marijuana is not one of those things“
“If we’re going to call it medical marijuana, it needs to be treated like a pharmaceutical. But the marijuana debate is going to be something that is not going to go away,” he said. “The margins are tighter.”
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D) noted that lawmakers have put forward a variety of cannabis measures over the years, calling Vos’s state-run proposal a “very interesting bill” that she “wasn’t in favor of,” for example.
The leader said she’s “hoping maybe we can work together and merge some okay ideas to actually get medicinal marijuana to the state of Wisconsin.”
“I’m hopeful,” she said. “We really are in a desert of nowhere.”
Assembly Minority Leader Rep. Greta Neubauer (D) said public support for reform could boost the chances of lawmakers getting something done this session.
“Marijuana legalization is incredibly popular in Wisconsin, she said. “We saw that as local communities were passing referendums on medical and recreational marijuana, and I just think having 15 members in the State Assembly who are in very close seats means that people are just going to be listening.”
The comments from bipartisan lawmakers comes in the background of Gov. Tony Evers’s (D) latest budget request, which called to “legalize, regulate, and tax the sale of marijuana for recreational use, much like Wisconsin already does with alcohol.”
Identical bills to facilitate the budget proposals have been filed in both the Senate and Assembly. But it’s anticipated that GOP leadership will move once again to remove the adult-use legalization provisions.
Evers previewed his plan to include marijuana legalization in his budget last month, while also arguing that residents of the state should be allowed to propose new laws by putting binding questions on the ballot—citing the fact that issues such as cannabis reform enjoy sizable bipartisan support while the GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to act.
Previously, in 2022, the governor signed an executive order to convene a special legislative session with the specific goal of giving people the right to put citizen initiatives on the ballot, raising hopes among advocates that cannabis legalization could eventually be decided by voters. The GOP legislature did not adopt the proposal, however.
Evers said in December that marijuana reform is one of several key priorities the state should pursue in the 2025 session, as lawmakers work with a budget surplus.
Days after he made the remarks, a survey found the reform would be welcomed by voters in rural parts of the state. Nearly two thirds (65 percent) said they support legalizing cannabis.
Last May, the governor said he was “hopeful” that the November 2024 election would lead to Democratic control of the legislature, in part because he argued it would position the state to finally legalize cannabis.
“We’ve been working hard over the last five years, several budgets, to make that happen,” he said at the time. “I know we’re surrounded by states with recreational marijuana, and we’re going to continue to do it.”
A Wisconsin Democratic Assemblymember tried to force a vote on a medical cannabis compromise proposal last year, as an amendment to an unrelated kratom bill, but he told Marijuana Moment he suspects leadership intentionally pulled that legislation from the agenda at the last minute to avoid a showdown on the issue.
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Meanwhile, the state Department of Revenue released a fiscal estimate of the economic impact of a legalization bill from then-Sen. Melissa Agard (D) in 2023, projecting that the reform would generate nearly $170 million annually in tax revenue.
A legislative analysis requested by lawmakers estimated that Wisconsin residents spent more than $121 million on cannabis in Illinois alone in 2022, contributing $36 million in tax revenue to the neighboring state.
Evers and other Democrats have since at least last January insisted that they would be willing to enact a modest medical marijuana program, even if they’d prefer more comprehensive reform.
Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.
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