JANESVILLE
Rock County Board member Yuri Rashkin used a press conference Monday to lobby voters to support a Nov. 6 advisory referendum on legalizing marijuana.
“I think it is really crucial to get people to the polls, almost regardless of which way you’re going to go with your voting decision,” Rashkin said during the event, which was held at the Rock County Courthouse.
“After it does (pass), which I’m confident it will, we can hold our elected officials accountable and demand action on the state level,” he said.
Rashkin was joined by Andrew Hysell of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, Beloit City Councilman Clinton Anderson and Brian Seamonson, an advocate for legalizing marijuana.
Rashkin in June introduced a resolution to add the advisory referendum to the ballot. The county board approved the measure, 14-12, on June 28. The referendum is nonbinding, meaning the results will simply gauge public support on the topic.
Hysell said legalizing marijuana would reduce what he called unnecessary prosecutions and arrests. He said African-Americans are four times more likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana, and he pointed to the 30 states that have already legalized medical marijuana.
“It’s a chance for voters to directly say to their elected officials, to their governor, this is what we want or don’t want,” Hysell said. “This is a chance for their voices to be heard.”
Several speakers said efforts by Canada and neighboring states such as Michigan and Illinois to deregulate or legalize marijuana have put Wisconsin at a disadvantage and that the state is falling behind its peers.
Seamonson, deputy director of Madison NORML, a national organization advocating for legalizing marijuana, said he became addicted to prescription opioids and heroin after his 2-year-old son died from an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2011.
He said he eventually went to a hospital to “safely withdraw from all these pharmaceuticals” and began researching the medical effects of marijuana.
“I proudly and successfully can say today that, since July 4, 2017, I have not taken one single pharmaceutical or used any heroin, and I contribute it all to cannabis,” Seamonson said.
Along with Rock County, three other counties Nov. 6, asking voters if the recreational use of marijuana should be legal. Ten counties will ask if marijuana should be legal for medical use of some kind, and two counties will ask multiple questions about legalizing marijuana.
According to a Marquette University Law School poll in August, 61 percent of respondents supported full legalization of marijuana.
Rashkin, who has endorsed Cmdr. Troy Knudson for Rock County sheriff, doubled down on his support Monday but said he wished Knudson’s position on legalizing marijuana was “stronger.”
In an August interview, Rock County Board Chairman Russ Podzilni, who voted against holding the advisory referendum, said he opposed legalizing marijuana and thought it might inflame drug addictions in the county.
“I can’t see any good reason to legalize it,” Podzilni said. “And I say to myself, ‘Do we need one more habit-forming drug on the market?’ Why add to the pile?”
