A measure that may legalize medical hashish in Wisconsin has apparently reached the tip of the road.
Republican lawmakers, who maintain the bulk within the state legislature, “allowed a Capitol debate on laws that may legalize marijuana use, however the step ahead for proponents received’t end in a brand new hashish legislation in Wisconsin anytime quickly,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
In accordance with the newspaper, a medical hashish invoice bought a listening to on the state capitol in Madison on Wednesday that was “scheduled weeks after GOP leaders concluded the Legislature’s work for the yr—prompting some Democrats who’ve lengthy supported legalization to accuse Republican invoice authors of utilizing the listening to as a ‘political ploy’ in an election yr.”
The invoice was authored by a GOP state senator who additionally leads the committee whose medical hashish advocacy stems from her expertise with breast most cancers.
“All of these medication have extreme uncomfortable side effects, some that I notice but in the present day, which is okay. I imply, I’m alive. But when there was a means {that a} pure product may have helped me with that?” the senator, Mary Felzkowski, mentioned at Wednesday’s listening to, as quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“When you’ve gotten a prescription drug that has a horrific facet impact, you then’re taking a drug to counteract the facet impact … it was unreal. I imply, it’s nearly like I went by six months of a fog,” she added.
However the invoice was seemingly lifeless on arrival, with the Journal Sentinel reporting that it “has little assist within the state Senate and nearly no probability of advancing, the place the GOP chief has mentioned he received’t assist such laws except the Meals and Drug Administration approves it as a prescription drug.”
Hashish coverage has develop into a divisive challenge within the Wisconsin legislature this yr. In February, the state’s Democratic governor Tony Evers vetoed a Republican-backed invoice that may have imposed stricter and distinct penalties for manufacturing and distributing hashish or resin by butane extraction.
Evers, who has been vocal in his calls to legalize hashish for all adults, mentioned the invoice was “one other step within the fallacious path.”
“I’m vetoing this invoice in its entirety as a result of I object to creating extra felony offenses or penalties associated to marijuana use,” Evers, who’s up for re-election this yr, mentioned in his veto assertion on the time.
“State throughout our nation—each Democrat and Republican-controlled alike—have and are taking significant steps to handle elevated incarceration charges and scale back racial disparities by investing in substance use therapy, group reentry programming, alternate options to incarceration, rehabilitation, and different data-driven, evidence-based practices we all know are important options to reforming our justice system,” the governor added. “The info and the science are clear on this challenge, and I welcome the legislature to start out having significant conversations round justice reform in Wisconsin.”
Neither medicinal nor leisure pot is authorized in Wisconsin.
For now, with Republicans controlling the legislature, outright legalization seems unlikely. However in a second of candor, one prime GOP lawmaker within the Badger State just lately prompt that such reform may be inevitable.
“Leisure marijuana, I believe, has a a lot more durable path to get by the legislature and ultimately signed into legislation, however I do suppose we’re heading in that path,” Jim Steineke, the bulk chief within the state meeting, mentioned final month.
However final yr, Steineke’s counterpart within the state Senate, Majority Chief Devin LeMathieu, mentioned that legalization is a nonstarter within the GOP-controlled legislature.
“We don’t have assist from the caucus. That’s fairly clear, that we don’t have 17 votes within the caucus for medicinal functions or leisure functions [to] legalize it,” LeMathieu mentioned then.