Governor Evers Vetoes Republican Anti-marijuana Bill

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Governor Tony Evers used his veto power to stop the GOP’s latest anti-marijuana bill from becoming law. The bill targets products derived from butane extraction, which is a method of obtaining highly concentrated and potent—but harmless—marijuana products.  

When Republican legislators introduced and subsequently passed the GOP bill along party lines, the Shepherd Express decried this naked effort to harshen criminal penalties for minor marijuana offenses. The bill aims to worsen the penalty for the manufacture, as well as mere possession of personal-use marijuana derived from butane. This would push the penalty for simple possession from a Class I felony, that carries a maximum of 3.5 years in prison, to a Class E felony, with a maximum sentence of 15 years of imprisonment.

“I am vetoing Assembly Bill 440 in its entirety because I object to creating additional criminal offenses or penalties related to marijuana use.” Tony Evers announced.

“In recent years, we have seen state after state reform marijuana prohibitions, from decriminalization to legalizing medical marijuana to legalizing recreational use. According to a 2019 Marquette Law School poll, nearly 60% of Wisconsinites believe the time has come for us to legalize recreational marijuana. I agree with them,” the governor wrote in defense of his veto, pointing out his past efforts to reform cannabis laws despite GOP blockades on the path to progress.

“Wisconsin ranks among the worst in the country for racial disparities in arrests for marijuana possession. Similarly, while national arrest rates for marijuana possession overall have declined over the last decade, Wisconsin has trended in the opposite direction, with marijuana possession arrests increasing more than 12% from 2010 to 2018. Moreover, that same study showed Black people are 4.2 times more likely to be arrested in Wisconsin for marijuana possession than their white counterparts despite comparable national rates of use,” Evers added. “As former Governor Tommy Thompson has said in recent years, ‘I’ve also come to believe that our corrections system and incarceration practices are both financially unsustainable and provide questionable outcomes worthy of strenuous review.’ I agree. And this bill would simply be another step in the wrong direction.”

Anti-progress Bill Passed on Party Lines

“The Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association was the only group that registered in support of the measure,” Fox 6 reported. “Supporters argued that stronger penalties were needed to combat the use of the product often known as hash oil or honey oil. [...] The extraction process is dangerous and often involves butane, an odorless gas that easily ignites,” Fox published, apparently forgetting to mention the points made by opponents of the bill.

Indeed, if Republican lawmakers defended the bill under the guise of stopping home laboratories from handling volatile chemical components in residential areas, they specifically chose to criminalize possession of the end product rather than its manufacture alone. Butane-obtained products are routine in states that legalized adult-use marijuana, such as our southern neighbor Illinois, and possession of minuscule amounts of it would have carried heavy prison sentences if Evers did not veto the bill. As little as four grams of butane-extracted marijuana wax could net a Wisconsin resident 10 years of hard prison time under the GOP bill 440. Four grams of such wax is smaller than your pinky’s fingernail.

“There are so many issues with this bill …” state Rep. Kristina Shelton deplored. “It doesn’t make any distinctions between a home-based butane extraction lab run by reckless amateurs [and] the professional, commercial-grade systems run by experts. When cannabis becomes legal, this bill will make it illegal for experts to do their jobs. Any marijuana legislation should be grounded in the larger issue, legalization, so that we can get into the nuances of the details to create common-sense, comprehensive reform. This bill explicitly creates tougher penalties, not just for manufacturing, but for possession, too. Tough-on-crime marijuana legislation isn’t what Wisconsin wants. We want more humane marijuana laws.”

Rep. Kristina Shelton even introduced an amendment to Bill 440 to address some of the issues that the bill would cause if marijuana were to ever become legalized in Wisconsin. The amendment merely added “unless the person is at a facility that holds a permit to produce or process marijuana” to the bill’s verbiage. Her common-sense amendment was summarily stamped out by Republican colleagues. Hers was not the only one, but every Democratic-led attempt to address the glaring flaws of Bill 440 were shot down by Republican lawmakers.

That is not to say Republicans refuse to consider positive cannabis reform at all: Republican state Sen. Mary Felzkowski introduced a GOP-approved medical marijuana reform bill, although it aims to keep most marijuana firmly illegal with the exception of traditional medicine derived from it, controlled and sold for profit by healthcare corporations. As could be expected, Democrats are not happy with this.

But, despite the Republican obstructionism, there is an actual fight about cannabis reform in Wisconsin. “I never thought I was going to live to see the day, but we’re actually talking realistically about marijuana reform,” said Senate Minority Leader Janet Bewley. Legalization is not a matter of if, “but when and how,” said Wisconsin’s greatest marijuana champion, state Sen. Melissa Agard.

“It is important that we realize there have been more pieces of legislation introduced this session from a broader swatch of political affiliations than we have seen in Wisconsin,” Sen. Agard said. “Clearly, we are having a lot of opportunities for robust conversation in the building, and that is exciting.”