Vos’ Med Weed Bill is a Drag

It now appears that the Republican Assembly’s plan to allow heavily restricted access to medical marijuana is up against more than token opposition in the Senate. What’s surprising is that I think I might agree with the Republican senators.

Here’s the deal. Speaker Robin Vos crafted a bill that he claims has the support of 50 Republicans in the Assembly. In order to get there Vos says that the bill had to have all kinds of restrictions. Marijuana could only be used to treat an ailment on a list of diseases in the bill. It would have to be in a smokeless form. And, here’s the big catch that Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu says is a nonstarter, it could only be accessed from one of five state run dispensaries.

LeMahieu says that his caucus objects to the heavy hand of the state running these outlets. Well, there’s more than that wrong with the Assembly bill, but I agree with LeMahieu that the dispensaries are overkill. At the very least, medical marijuana should be available at any pharmacy.

But in essence Vos’ bill represents a small, kind of goofy, step in the generally right direction. Two-thirds of all states allow for medical marijuana and half now allow for full-on recreational use, including all of our neighbors, except Iowa. It’s becoming kind of like colored oleo was in the 1960s. You can drive down to Illinois, load up the trunk, and smuggle it back home. Pssst. Hey, Robin, your neighbors in Burlington, so close to the southern Wisconsin border, are probably giggling at your bill.

Actually, I’m less than enthusiastic about all this. For one thing, my personal experience with the product isn’t all that great. Like Bill Clinton, I did smoke some in college. Unlike Bill, I did, in fact, inhale. But all I got out of it was a scratchy throat. I didn’t like the taste or the smell or the smoke and I couldn’t be sure that any effect it might have had was from the weed or the beer. My experiences since college days have been few and far between and no more satisfying.

Moreover, I figure that, in a state that has a massive binge drinking problem and leads the nation in drunk driving, having yet another recreational drug outlet shouldn’t be exactly the first thing on the agenda.

But it’s inevitable. As noted above Wisconsin is becoming an outlier and, given the easy availability near us, it’s not like Wisconsinites aren’t using the drug in growing numbers already. Might as well give the people what they want. Allow it, regulate it (but not nearly as heavily as Vos wants to do with medical weed) and tax it.

So, in that sense, I agree with the Senate Republicans. State run dispensaries are overkill, as is most everything else about their Assembly colleagues’ bill. That legislation is just a drag.