Wisconsin GOP Senate President Is Hopeful About Legalizing Medical Marijuana In 2025, But Says Assembly Leader Poses ‘Obstacle’

Wisconsin’s GOP Senate president says she’s “hoping to have a conversation” in the legislature next month about legalizing medical marijuana in 2025—though the Republican Assembly speaker still represents “an obstacle,” she added.

Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R), who’s previously sponsored medical cannabis legislation, said at a WiscPolitics event on Tuesday that “there’s really one person that has seemed to be an obstacle” to the reform, and that he “has some pretty strict ideas on how that bill should be drafted.”

That’s a reference to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R), who earlier this year introduced a restrictive medical marijuana bill to provide limited access through state-run dispensaries. That proposed model faced criticism on both sides of the aisle, and the measure ultimately died for the session shortly after it was filed.

“We’re hoping to have a conversation in early January to see if there isn’t a way that we can come to a consensus between Assembly Republicans and Senate Republicans to negotiate a compromise and maybe move medical marijuana bill this session,” Felzkowski said. “That conversation has not taken place yet.”

The Senate’s top Democrat, meanwhile, also said this week that she intends to introduce a medical marijuana bill in the coming session, signaling alignment in at least one chamber.

Felzkowski, for her part, first introduced a measure to provide access to medical cannabis in 2018 when she was in the Assembly. A cancer survivor, the senator said in 2022 that “Wisconsinites deserve another tool in the toolbox as they go through difficult treatment and recovery journeys, look to alleviate their chronic pain, and handle the debilitating effects of PTSD.”

While Felzkowski said in this latest interview that Vos has represented a key barrier to the reform, she’s previously placed some blame on Democratic lawmakers who were pushing for adult-use legalization legislation, arguing that it was undermining the conversation around more modest medical marijuana.

Meanwhile, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D) also spoke to WiscPolitics about the issue, noting that while the medical cannabis bill the Republican speaker introduced early this year contained “a lot of really good things,” the state-run dispensaries model was something “neither his caucus nor ours could get around.”

“We’re going to sit down with the speaker and have that conversation,” she said. “So we’re hoping that, you know, Robin will be willing to remove that and we can do something else there and get it done.”

Vos said in February that the GOP-controlled Senate “wants to have a more liberal version than the one that we’re willing to pass,” which “probably doesn’t leave us enough time with the waning days of the session” to advance that bill.

The latest comments from Felzkowski and Neubauer come on the heels of support for marijuana legalization as a 2025 priority from Gov. Tony Evers (D) as well as results of a new survey showing strong support for cannabis legalization among rural voters.

Evers’s comments—in which he said he’d like to see “legalizing marijuana” put second on a list of items to be implemented in the new year—came earlier this month as part of a listening tour related to the state budget.  Other proposed reforms included expanding healthcare, promoting gun safety and more.

In May, Evers had said he was “hopeful” that the November election would give Democrats 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.”

Following the failure of the most recent GOP-led medical marijuana bill, some elected Democrats criticized Republican lawmakers for blocking cannabis reform. Sen. Melissa Agard (D), for example, described the proposal in an op-ed for Marijuana Moment as a “sham medical marijuana bill” that “was always smoke and mirrors.”

The state Department of Revenue released a fiscal estimate of the economic impact of a legalization bill from Agard last year, projecting that the reform would generate nearly $170 million annually in tax revenue.

Republicans have also consistently stripped marijuana proposals from the governor’s budget requests.

—
Marijuana Moment is tracking more than 1,500 cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.

Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.
—

A Wisconsin Democratic Assemblymember tried to force a vote on a medical cannabis compromise proposal in February, 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.

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 January insisted that they would be willing to enact a modest medical marijuana program, even if they’d prefer more comprehensive reform.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers formally introduced a measure to decriminalize marijuana possession in December 2023. Sponsors had hoped the limited, noncommercial reform would win enough support to clear the state’s GOP-controlled legislature and become law in parallel with the separate medical cannabis bill.

GOP Senator Wants Congress To Have A ‘Discussion’ About Marijuana Next Year, But Says He Won’t Vote For Legalization