Marijuana advocates have hope but face hurdles as Wisconsin eyes legalization

Gary Storck has been here before.

For decades, Storck, a longtime medical marijuana advocate from Madison, has been pushing the state Legislature to legalize his medicine. Storck suffers from glaucoma. He uses cannabis to slow progression of the disease, which is gradually robbing him of his sight.

The first big moment was in 2002, when statewide polling found that 80.3 percent of Wisconsinites supported medical marijuana. Storck was ecstatic. When he first heard the numbers, “I jumped in the air about a foot, I think. I was so happy to see that level of support.”

Storck was convinced that this would be the moment to finally legalize medical marijuana. Volunteers from Is My Medicine Legal Yet?, a group that Storck co-founded, placed copies of the polling results in every office at the State Capitol.

“We thought, they see this, they’re going to pass it,” Storck said. “Well, it didn’t happen.” A bipartisan bill sponsored by former Republican Rep. Gregg Underheim of Oshkosh did not make it out of committee. [Read more at Post Cresent]