Wis. Attorney General candidates Eric Toney and Adam Jarchow
Wisconsin Attorney General candidates Eric Toney and Adam Jarchow
Running against Attorney General Josh Kaul as the top law enforcement officer in Wisconsin are two Republican candidates, former state Rep. Adam Jarchow and Fond Du Lac District Attorney Eric Toney. Marijuana reform supporters need to know what to expect from both.
The Importance of Progressive Leadership
Current Attorney General Josh Kaul already expressed support for cannabis reform, including the legalization of medical marijuana. He is not clear on his stance regarding recreational marijuana. The Attorney General’s office has the duty to steer and temper law enforcement, especially in Wisconsin, where oppression targeted at people possessing personal-use amounts of marijuana is deeply ingrained.
“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,” Governor Tony Evers decried. “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.”
Data from the Wisconsin Department of Justice shows the influence of progressive leadership: Since 2019, when Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh took office, arrests for possession of marijuana plummeted. Former Gov. Scott Walker had ramped up repression of minor, non-violent marijuana possession throughout his time in office, totaling nearly 150,000 arrests in just eight years in power—nearly as many minor marijuana arrests as his predecessor, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, oversaw during his 14 years in office. The worst-ever year on record was Scott Walker’s last year in power, in 2018, when 17,444 Wisconsinites were arrested for simple possession of marijuana. In 2019, Josh Kaul’s first year as Attorney General, arrests fell to less than 15,000, then to 11,500 in 2020, the lowest it has been in decades.
What Josh Kaul and Tony Evers accomplished was to move focus away from low-level, non-violent marijuana offenses. It is time and resources from the police and justice systems that are more efficiently allocated to more serious issues. If importance is given to the repression of illicit marijuana, it should be directed towards large-scale traffic, not small-scale users, especially given that our southern neighbor, Illinois, makes a fortune selling legal marijuana products to Wisconsin residents. There is now no established link between personal-use possession of cannabis and support for drug traffickers.
Who Are the Republican Candidates for Attorney General?
Adam Jarchow is an odd case: As a lawyer, Jarchow specializes in business law, not criminal law, and he approaches the campaign as a politician rather than a judicial expert. He criticized his opponent, Eric Toney, for treating the job “with a narrow perspective as a prosecutor.” Jarchow argued that the Attorney General is more akin to being “the CEO of the state Department of Justice,” The Capital Times reports.
Adam Jarchow’s views on marijuana are out of place among his fellow Republicans. Not only did he argue in favor of cannabis reform and signal friendliness towards legalization efforts, but Jarchow also co-sponsored a marijuana decriminalization bill. “It seems to me to be pretty odd that possession of a couple joints could land you in jail or prison,” Jarchow said. He determined his stance on marijuana after being urged to do so by his constituents: “If people in rural Northwestern Wisconsin in a conservative district think we need to change course, then maybe we do,” he said.
But outside of marijuana issues, Jarchow is very much a Republican. He was previously banned from Twitter after expressing support for Donald Trump, and like Trump himself, he regularly takes to Twitter to rail against “radical socialists” and “commie sympathizers.” His Twitter handle certainly tells informed voters where he stands: “Dad, Husband, small businessman, attorney. Been banned once already. My pronoun is #Patriot. Running for WI Attorney General. Take Back Wisconsin #AmericaFirst.”
Eric Toney is a career prosecutor who is every bit as Republican as Jarchow. Unlike Jarchow, however, Toney does not support marijuana at all. “Wisconsin won’t go the way of California and Illinois in legalizing marijuana and eliminating cash bail,” he tweeted, eliminating any potential doubt on his stance regarding cannabis.
Toney took credit on the campaign trail for the establishment of a Drug Court in Fond Du Lac. He “recognizes that incarceration is only one part of the solution in fighting the drug epidemic,” according to his campaign communication. The solution to drug abuse is medical help, not incarceration; incarceration should never be the conclusion of any non-violent case of drug possession.
Toney demonstrated that he has a complete lack of understanding of marijuana issues when he wrote: “As the only AG candidate opposed to legalizing marijuana, here are 4 reasons: 1) Marijuana/drugs lead to violent crime; 2) Legalization will make it easier for kids to access pot; 3) Legalization will strain the worker shortage; 4) Drug cartels will undercut any legal pot price.”
In Washington state, where recreational marijuana was legalized 10 years ago, violent crime trended down rather than up according to FBI statistics. If crime does increase punctually, it has little to no direct link with the legality of marijuana. In the meantime, legalization has greatly reduced juvenile marijuana arrests and has not affected access to marijuana among the youth, as seen through Colorado’s “Impacts of Marijuana Legalization in Colorado” report.
The experience of Colorado and Washington also demonstrate that Americans largely prefer to purchase legal cannabis, grown by farmers with the oversight and quality control of the government, rather than cheaper but much riskier illicit cannabis, as evidenced by the literal tons of Colorado- and Washington-sourced marijuana taking the place of cartel-sourced marijuana in states where cannabis is still illegal. As for Toney’s last point, “straining the worker shortage” is certainly an odd way to say “create jobs.” The marijuana industry currently supports nearly half-a-million jobs paying a livable wage in states where it is legal, Leafly reports.
Legal marijuana is not an unknown entity. Recreational marijuana has been legal for a full decade in several states, now, and data has been gathered on a large scale. In the past, people opposed to marijuana reform could simply make up scary lies about what might happen, what catastrophic scenarios might unfold if legalization went through. This is not the case anymore; opinions mean nothing in the face of facts, and Wisconsin might want to elect an Attorney General who understands the difference between facts and opinions.
