The minority leader of Wisconsin’s Senate said this week that she plans to introduce a medical marijuana legalization bill in the coming legislative session, building on past legalization efforts that have fallen short in the face of pushback from Republican lawmakers.
Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D) told local reporters she believes the medical-only measure will have a realistic chance at passage in the coming year given recent Democratic pickups in the Senate that ended the GOP’s supermajority control of the chamber.
“With 18 Republicans and 15 Democrats, I think they’re going to need our votes to get anything done in the state Senate,” she told Wisconsin Public Radio.
Hesselbein said she intends to reintroduce a 2022 bill that would have tasked the state’s Department of Health Services with overseeing a medical marijuana program. That’s a more modest proposal than Democrats’ most recent proposal to legalize both medical and recreational use.
Some elected Republicans did support limited medical marijuana legalization this past session, but leaders said there wasn’t enough time to hammer out differences between Senate and Assembly lawmakers.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) said in February that the GOP-controlled Senate “wants to have a more liberal version than the one
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