There is news on the Wisconsin controlled substances front.

First: The National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws reports:

Legislation is pending in the Senate and Assembly that seeks to allow municipalities to penalize marijuana possession offenders in instances where the District Attorney has refused to prosecute.

Under state law, local governments prosecute first-time marijuana possession offenses involving 25 grams or fewer. Repeat offenses, or any offense involving a quantity of marijuana over 25 grams, is prosecuted in state court at the discretion of the District Attorney. Senate Bill 150 and its companion bill (AB 164) would allow local jurisdictions to enact ordinances allowing for municipal courts to prosecute repeat cannabis possession offenders and/or those charged with possession more than 25 grams of cannabis in cases where the District Attorney has explicitly declined to do so.

SB 150 is sponsored by Sens. Joe Leibham (R–Elkhart Lake) and Rick Gudex (R–Fond du Lac); five Republicans are the sponsors of AB 164. I guess none of those seven must belong in the conservatarian camp.

These bills seem to be an argument about local control — the ability of a city, village or town to enact stiffer penalties for a crime than state law. District attorneys prosecute violations of state law and county ordinances; municipal attorneys prosecute violations of municipal law, although in most communities county ordinances and state laws are codified in the municipal code. While this apparently is about district attorneys and marijuana, the spirit applies to, say, circuit judges who are seen as lenient on, say, underage drinking in college towns. And either opposes the concept of equal protection under law — that something that is illegal in Abbotsford is illegal in Zittau, and the penalty for the crime in Zittau is the same as the penalty for the crime in Abbotsford.

The other issue here is the public’s lack of enthusiasm for the drug war, which hasn’t reduced illegal drug use, but has sucked up government resources. Politicians may lack the guts to propose reducing marijuana-related penalties, but that’s being done in effect by police’s disinterest in pursuing recreational marijuana users, who are, after all, guilty (once proven so in a court of law) of breaking the law. Regular readers know that I am skeptical of marijuana’s supposed benefits, but I am also skeptical of marijuana’s overstated harm. Not enforcing the law, and passing laws that are unenforceable, creates disrespect for the law.

Sort of related is the push by state Sen. Alberta Darling (R–River Hills) and Rep. Jim Ott (R–Mequon) to stiffen drunk driving penalties. One bill (there are Senate and Assembly versions for all of these) would set a mandatory minimum sentence of six months in jail to three years in prison for a drunk driver who injures someone, depending on the severity of the injury. Another would set a mandatory 10-year prison sentence for a drunk-driving death. Another would make a first-offense drunk driving charge where the driver exceeds 0.15 in blood alcohol level a misdemeanor, not a traffic ticket. Another would make third-offense drunk driving a felony. Another would allow the seizure of a car driven by someone arrested for third-offense drunk driving.

Some of these seem to make more sense than others — increasing penalties for killing or injuring someone while driving drunk. I oppose the 0.15 standard because I oppose the 0.08 standard and before that the 0.10 standard. Evidence of drunk driving should be based on evidence of actual impairment, not on the results of a blood test.

With all of these, however, there is the problem the Wisconsin State Journal brought up in April:

Measures that would boost penalties for drunken driving would cost $250 million a year and send thousands more people to jail or prison, according to estimates provided by state agencies that would be charged with implementing the proposals.

The state also would need to spend $236 million to build 17 300-bed facilities to house the expected increase in people serving time for drunken driving, the Department of Corrections estimates.

Those estimates don’t include the extra costs to counties whose jails would house offenders serving sentences of a year or less.

So where will that money — $236 million or more in jail construction and expansion, and $250 million every year — come from? This is a state with a correctly measured (as in by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) deficit nearing $300 million. (Yes, the state budget is legally, not factually, balanced, which puts Gov. Scott Walker in the same place as all of his predecessors, since GAAP-balanced budgets are not required by state law). Republicans correctly blast Democrats for proposing things with total disregard for their cost. Well, this looks like the shoe on the other foot.

The biggest drunk driving problem, based on my years of covering those who get arrested for drunk driving, is repeat offenders, who apparently must be physically separated from their ability to drive. (Not merely from their own vehicle, because it is safe to assume the proposal to seize cars from drunk drivers won’t prevent them from getting another one somehow.) It is remarkable to me that we have so many repeat offenders of not just drunk driving, but operating after driver’s licenses are suspended or revoked. That seems to indicate that the punishment and the chance of getting arrested aren’t much deterrent. (In fact, one school of thought says that increasing penalties serves to encourage those who are driving drunk to try to evade police, with, as you  can imagine, potentially disastrous consequences.) Further evidence is in the high failure rate of substance-abuse programs.

As a society we appear in some cases to have the wrong people in jail (for instance, those guilty of what could be called “victimless crimes”), which means we don’t have room for people who do belong in jail and aren’t in jail. Answering the drunk driving problem in a fiscally responsible way seems to require dealing with that conundrum.