Pending Legislation
Wisconsin proposes marijuana legalization with comprehensive regulations for medical and adult-use markets.
Wisconsin Governor Proposes Ballot Initiative for Marijuana Legalization Despite GOP Opposition
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers seeks voter power for marijuana legalization through a ballot initiative proposal, challenging GOP opposition. The plan would enable citizen-initiated binding laws as lawmakers consider the 2025 budget.
The governor of Wisconsin says 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 marijuana legalization enjoy sizable bipartisan support while the GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to act.
Gov. Tony Evers (D) said during a press conference that he will be including a proposal in his 2025-27 biennial budget to give citizens the right to put forward ballot initiative to enact statutory or constitutional policy changes if a majority of voters approve them.
“The will of the people should be the law of the land. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly worked to put constitutional amendments on the ballot that Republicans drafted, and Republicans passed, all while Republicans refuse to give that same power to the people of Wisconsin. And that’s wrong,” he said.
“Republican lawmakers shouldn’t be able to ignore the will of the people and then prevent the people from having a voice when the Legislature fails to listen,” he said. “That has to change. If Republican lawmakers are going to continue to try and legislate by constitutional amendment, then they should give the people that same power and that’s what I’ll be asking them to do in my next budget.”
At the presser on Friday, Evers specifically mentioned that there’s majority support for “legalizing and taxing marijuana like we do alcohol,” as well as other issues such as abortion rights, gun safety and increasing funding for public education. Yet “Republican legislators have repeatedly ignored the will of the people of Wisconsin,” he said, according to Wisconsin Examiner.
Previously, inn 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.
Whether the legislature will heed Evers’s latest budget request for the policy change is uncertain. Lawmakers have previously declined to act on his other budget proposals, including those calling to enact legalization of recreational or medical cannabis.
Evers said last month 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.”
But the GOP-controlled legislature has so far failed to pass even limited medical cannabis legislation, even a conservative bill was filed last January that the Assembly speaker had promoted. Republicans have also consistently stripped marijuana proposals from the governor’s budget requests.
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.
That move came as the GOP speaker retreated on his own limited cannabis legislation that a top Republican senator criticized as anti-free market because it would’ve created a system of state-run dispensaries.
Wisconsin’s GOP Senate president says she’s “hoping to have a conversation” in the legislature this month about legalizing medical marijuana in 2025—though the Republican Assembly speaker still represents “an obstacle,” she added.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Revenue released a fiscal estimate of the economic impact of a legalization bill from 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.
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