“It’s something that we should carefully reexamine,” she says about state marijuana laws, noting that 40 percent of black men sent to prison in Milwaukee County since 1990 were incarcerated because of drug offenses. “We’re talking about spending millions of dollars to lock up drug addicts.”

But she hints that she may not be as sympathetic to those arrested for dealing drugs.

“Dealing drugs and using drugs are two different things,” she says.

Another Milwaukee Democrat, Rep. Evan Goyke, has drafted legislation that would establish parity between first offense drunk driving and first offense marijuana possession. While state law treats first offense drunk driving as a non-criminal traffic violation, first offense marijuana possession can be charged as a misdemeanor, even though many municipalities, including Madison, now treat it as a non-criminal ordinance violation. Goyke’s bill would take Madison’s approach statewide.

But even though Goyke’s bill would decriminalize first offense possession, subsequent offenses would result in misdemeanors and, eventually, felonies.

And even Goyke, a former public defender, does not believe dealers of serious drugs should be let off the hook.