GOP-Led Wisconsin Committee Cuts Governor’s Marijuana Legalization Proposal From Budget

Republicans in Wisconsin’s legislature on Thursday cut key provisions from a state budget proposal by Gov. Tony Evers (D), including plans to legalize and regulate marijuana.

The changes came in a Joint Finance Committee hearing, where members removed a long list of items included in the governor’s budget. In addition to cannabis legalization, other deleted items include tax cuts for the middle class, tax increases for millionaires and state support for children, farmers and veterans.

Evers said on social media ahead of the vote that “today, Republican lawmakers are gutting my budget that does what’s best for our kids and the folks, families, and communities that raise them.”

The committee’s 21 pages of cuts remove multiple marijuana provisions from Evers’s budget, such as regulation, taxation, licensing and civil and criminal legal adjustments.

The actions are a repeat of two years ago, when GOP members of the same committee removed proposals to legalize marijuana for recreational and medical use from the governor’s biennial executive budget at that time.

A press release from the governor’s office about Thursday’s committee changes says the legalization proposal would have regulated marijuana “much like the state already does with alcohol, which would help Wisconsin compete with other states for talented workers and have more resources to invest in critical state priorities.”

The reform is “a proposal that over 60 percent of Wisconsinites support,” the release notes, pointing to a poll from February.

❌ Allowing Wisconsinites to put binding referenda and constitutional amendments on the ballot, preventing legislators from deleting public records, expanding BadgerCare, and legalizing and taxing recreational marijuana, among other proposals that reflect the will of the people.

— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) May 8, 2025

Evers included the latest marijuana legalization plan in his biennial budget request to lawmakers in February, projecting at the time that the change would result in “$58.1 million in revenue in fiscal year 2026-27 and growing amounts in future years.”

Under current Wisconsin law, cannabis is illegal for both recreational and medical purposes.

The legalization proposal would have imposed a 15 percent wholesale excise tax and a 10 percent retail excise tax on recreational cannabis products. It would additionally “create a process for individuals serving sentences or previously convicted of marijuana-related crimes to have an opportunity to repeal or reduce their sentences for nonviolent minor offenses.”

The companion bills that were filed in tandem with the governor’s budget request stipulate that all revenue collected from the proposed cannabis taxes will be deposited into the state general fund.

In addition to legalizing cannabis for adult use, Evers aimed to include delta-8, delta-10 THC and other intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids in the definition of marijuana to “ensure their production, processing and sale is regulated and not available to individuals under 21.”

Further, the governor called for the the Department of Revenue the enter into agreements with tribal territories “for the refund to tribes of marijuana excise taxes estimated to be collected from sales on tribal lands,” similar to current policy with tobacco products.

Home cultivation of up to six cannabis plants would also have been allowed.

In terms of medical cannabis, a qualifying patient would be defined as someone “who has been diagnosed by a physician as having or undergoing a debilitating medical condition or treatment and who is at least 18 years old.”

The legislation would have also prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of off-duty marijuana use, exempts THC from drug testing for certain public assistance programs and protects people from being denied organ transplants due to cannabis consumption.

“The bill creates a process to review convictions for acts that have been decriminalized under the bill,” a legislative summary said of the bill prior to Thursday’s changes. “If the person is currently serving a sentence or on probation for such a conviction, the person may petition a court to dismiss the conviction and expunge the record. If the person has completed a sentence or period of probation for such a conviction, the person may petition a court to expunge the record or, if applicable, redesignate it to a lower crime.”

Despite Republicans’ move to cut legalization from the budget legislation, party leaders recently acknowledged that the debate over medical marijuana legalization is “not going to go away,” and there’s hope it can be resolved this session.

“I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think that marijuana and THC products aren’t present in the state of Wisconsin when they are readily available over state lines, so I think we need to come to an answer on this,” Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August (R) said in February. “I’m hopeful that we can.”

“If we’re going to call it medical marijuana, it needs to be treated like a pharmaceutical. But the marijuana debate is going to be something that is not going to go away,” Sen. Dan Feyen (R), the assistant majority leader, said at the time. “The margins are tighter.”

There have been repeated attempts to legalize medical marijuana in the legislature over recent years, including the introduction of legislation from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) that called for a limited program facilitated through state-run dispensaries. That proved controversial among his Republican colleagues, however, and it ultimately stalled out last year.

Evers previewed his plan to include marijuana legalization in his budget in January, while also arguing that 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 cannabis reform enjoy sizable bipartisan support while the GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to act.

Previously, in 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.

Evers said in December 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.”

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.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Revenue released a fiscal estimate of the economic impact of a legalization bill from then-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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Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.