Cannabis legalization is wildly popular in Wisconsin. A 2022 Marquette Law School study found that 69% of Wisconsin registered voters and the majority of voters in every political party supported legalizing recreational weed. Supporters included 51% of Wisconsin Republicans, 53% of Wisconsinites over the age of 60, and every racial, regional, income, and educational demographic in the survey.

If the majority of Wisconsinites support weed legalization across the political spectrum, then why did Wisconsin’s Assembly Speaker Robin Vos state that he is going to do everything he can to not create a legal “pathway or a gateway to recreational marijuana?”

Ideally, in a true democracy, if an overwhelming majority of the people support a policy then the lawmakers that represent them will work to make that policy come to fruition. However, Wisconsin Republican lawmakers have failed to make any attempt to even consider the legalization of weed in Wisconsin, even though they have had ample opportunities.

During her time in the state Assembly, now Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard sparked conversation around legalization by introducing legislation during the 2013-14, 2015-16, 2017-18, and 2019-20 legislative sessions to make weed legal and available to adults 21 and older in Wisconsin, but these bills never received public hearings. Once elected to the Senate, Agard introduced legislation again during the 2021-22 legislative session. Wisconsin lawmakers shut that bill down.

Governor Tony Evers also included decriminalization and medical cannabis in his 2019-21 executive budget and adult-use and medical legalization in his 2021-23 budget, but the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee nixed these efforts. Governor Evers called for legalization again in his 2023-25 biennial budget request, though the likelihood of success is slim. 

Recently, Sen. Agard pointed out that  $36.1 million of Illinois tax revenue generated from the sale of weed in 2022 came from Wisconsinites purchasing cannabis across the border. As Sen. Agard stated “this is revenue that could be going toward Wisconsin’s public schools, transportation infrastructure, and public safety.” Wisconsin residents are estimated to have spent $121 million on weed in Illinois in 2022. It has gotten to the point that South Beloit Mayor Ted Rehl admitted that his town’s budget relies on the failure of Wisconsin to legalize weed. Yet, the two most powerful Republican legislators, Speaker Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu still will not support the policy; without them, there is no chance of legalization.

I could continue to hammer home the economic benefit like Colorado bringing in $423 million in tax revenue from cannabis sales in 2021. I could write more about the common sense in treating recreational weed consumption the same way that we treat alcohol or nicotine, both of which are vastly more dangerous drugs according to a 2015 study published in Scientific Reports. Or the positive effect of legalization on racial justice and criminal legal reform, and how it would lessen the racial disparities that cause Black people to be 4.2 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession in Wisconsin, despite comparable usage rates. I could argue that we are falling behind other states with our neighbor, Minnesota, set to legalize recreational weed in the coming weeks. However none of these arguments seem to sway Wisconsin lawmakers leading the legislature.

The vast majority of Wisconsin voters support legal weed but our legislators — who are supposed to serve and represent our interests — refuse to listen. Jay Selthofner, founder of the Wisconsin Cannabis Activist Network said it best, on the issue of cannabis, “If Republicans would govern instead of rule, Wisconsin would certainly have medical marijuana sessions ago and be on the pathway to legalization of adult-use marijuana.”

The core concept of weed legalization is the same concept that America has been struggling with since its inception: freedom. Do we trust Wisconsin adults to responsibly consume weed in the same way they responsibly drink alcohol, drive cars, and smoke tobacco, which all carry significantly more risk than weed? We allow adults to do these things because we understand philosophically that freedom comes with risk and those risks are better than the tradeoff of losing our freedom of privacy.

There was a time in Wisconsin history that women and Black people couldn’t vote, and LGBTQ+ people couldn’t marry, but we corrected our ways and understood that the best democracy is a free democracy. Part of that progress will be to give Wisconsin voters the right to recreationally consume weed because of this basic principle of freedom.

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The Tennessee General Assembly drew nationwide condemnation on April 7th for voting to expel Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — two Black elected lawmakers — after they joined protesters and took part in a demonstration calling for action on gun violence. Instead of listening to protesters’ desperate pleas for change in the wake of another mass shooting, Tennessee legislators responded by removing two members of the legislature from office — a brazenly anti-democratic act which left more than a hundred thousand Tennesseeans, mostly people of color,  without political representation in state government.

While both men have since been reinstated, it doesn’t at all negate what happened. The Tennessee Legislature demonstrated that they were willing to overlook the will of the people in service of their own political interests. And they aren’t alone.

Preserving power at the expense of democracy

Days before the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Dan Knodl — a candidate running in the 8th Senate District who would go on to win his race — said he would “certainly consider” launching impeachment proceedings against Janet Protasiewicz, although it’s not clear whether he was only discussing impeaching her as a circuit court judge or as a Supreme Court Justice.

Knodl’s comments come after the long-overdue conclusion of Michael’s Gabelman’s 2020 election audit, a sham, nearly $2 million taxpayer-funded investigation into apparent widespread voter fraud that never existed. And in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, ten Wisconsinites were involved in the fake elector plot to reverse the results.

But Wisconsin’s anti-democratic trends predated the “election hoax” hysteria of 2020. After voters elected a new governor and attorney general in 2018, then-Governor Scott Walker signed into law a package of bills that diminished the power of both offices just as a new administration was about to take over.

If we have so many politicians willing to take these egregious actions — from removing duly elected officials for purely partisan reasons, to relentlessly challenging the results of a free and fair election, to altering our system of government itself — democracy cannot prevail. The expulsions in Tennessee and the erosion of democracy in Wisconsin reflect a growing number of American politicians who refuse to relinquish power, even when it comes at the voters’ expense.

Retaliating against dissent

The events in Tennessee also shine a light on another harrowing reality — that we as a country are still often more comfortable chilling dissent than we are with facing it. When confronted with spirited protest over the government’s response to gun violence, it’s telling that the leadership in Tennessee’s legislature chose to retaliate against the dissenters rather than answer to them. It’s also telling that while the two Black representatives involved in the protest were thrown out, the white representative, who also participated, was spared her job.

This racial disparity parallels the reaction that states have had to other protest activity, especially when that activity is BIPOC-led. In the aftermath of the 2020 mass mobilizations against police violence, a number of state legislature’s, including Wisconsin’s, introduced bills intended to crackdown and criminalize protest. Senate Bill 96, Wisconsin’s anti-protest bill, was recently reintroduced in 2023. That this legislation became prevalent after waves of Black-led protests is no coincidence. The silencing of Black voices — and the ousting of Black leaders — is nothing new.

Historical roots of removing Black leaders 

In 1868, white legislators in Georgia expelled 33 Black legislators elected to the state government. Henry McNeal Turner, one of the legislators expelled from office, stated in response, “[White legislators] question my right to a seat in this body, to represent the people whose legal votes elected me. This objection, sir, is an unheard-of monopoly of power.” Almost 100 years later in Georgia,  the George House of Representatives tried to stop elected Black legislator Julian Bond from being sworn in due to his condemning the U.S. actions in Vietnam. Bond sued and his case made it to the Supreme Court under Bond v. Floyd where the Supreme Court supported Bond’s freedom of speech and protected his constituents' right to elect their representative. Like many of America’s most entrenched problems, the removal of Black leaders in Tennessee has deep roots to the past.

The signals of democratic backsliding we are seeing in Tennessee, Wisconsin and beyond cannot be ignored. The increasingly dangerous lengths politicians and governments are going to preserve power poses a grave threat to democracy. We all must take notice of and reverse these anti-democratic trends. We can’t afford not to.