The Wisconsin State Patrol is arresting more people than ever for marijuana possession, even as arrests at the local level have fallen and the state remains an outlier in a sea of legal weed in the Midwest.
Arrests for marijuana possession on Wisconsin highways grew to 1,666 in 2022 compared to 1,292 in 2019, according to arrest data kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As more Wisconsinites are getting arrested for something that is legal on the other side of the state line, the number of Black people arrested as a percentage of all pot arrests has doubled.
In 2015, Black people made up 18% of the 825 people the State Patrol arrested for marijuana possession, according to the FBI. In 2022, they made up 36% of the 1,666 arrested.
About 7.7% of the state’s population is Black, up from 7.1% in 2010. White and Black people, though, have long used marijuana at comparable rates, according to national studies on drug use.
“It’s devastating,” said Amanda Merkwae, the advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. “The harm from this continued, antiquated mindset of drug war policing is really derailing people’s lives.”
Over the last five years, three of Wisconsin’s neighbors — Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota — legalized marijuana. Rules for driving with marijuana in those states vary, but people can drive with more than an ounce in the vehicle in all three as long as its secured and inaccessible to the driver.
About half of Wisconsinites live within a 75-minute drive of a dispensary in a different state, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. Wisconsinites making weed runs into Illinois contributed about $36 million in tax revenue there in 2022.
In counties with Interstates near the border with Illinois, arrests for marijuana possession jumped in 2021 but fell the following year, according to State Patrol data obtained through an open records request.
Across Kenosha, Racine and Rock counties, state troopers arrested 146 people in 2021 for having pot and related paraphernalia, compared to 104 in 2019. In 2022, 103 were arrested in those three counties.
The biggest post-legalization jump happened in Rock County. In 2019, only seven arrests were made there. After legalization between 2020 and 2022, an average of 31 people were arrested there annually.
Those arrests coincide with the 2020 opening of the Sunnyside Cannabis Dispensary in South Beloit about 2,000 feet from the Rock County line on the Wisconsin border.
“Possession of marijuana remains illegal under Wisconsin law,” the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which oversees the State Patrol, said in a statement about the growing number of marijuana arrests.
In the data, it’s unclear what is leading state troopers to arrest more people for having marijuana or the probable cause used to search a vehicle for pot. Troopers commonly establish cause to search a vehicle for marijuana from the smell of it, visible evidence, people in a vehicle admitting to having it and drug dogs, according to the DOT.
“It does not matter if the marijuana was obtained legally in another state,” the DOT said. “When officers with the Wisconsin State Patrol or other Wisconsin law enforcement agencies locate illegal substances such as marijuana, they will take appropriate enforcement action based on the circumstances.”
The DOT declined to release any demographic information about who is getting arrested for weed possession on the border, citing privacy protections, even though the State Journal did not request identifying information such as names or addresses.
“It’s highly improper for them to withhold demographic information,” said Bill Lueders, the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. “I’ve never ever heard somebody in law enforcement say that a person who’s been charged with a crime has privacy.”
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