Data from the United States Sentencing Commission shows that Wisconsin’s two federal court districts treat cannabis differently
Federal enforcement of cannabis laws in Wisconsin has been minimal in recent years, with only 67 individuals sentenced for federal marijuana crimes since 2017 and none at all in the Western District between 2020 and 2023.
The trends in Wisconsin’s two federal court districts diverge — with the Milwaukee-based Eastern District seeing an increase in federal cannabis crime sentences between 2019 and 2023.
Federal law
Though most states have decriminalized or legalized some form of cannabis, the federal government still classifies it as a Schedule I drug and maintains severe penalties for its possession and trafficking.1 But while the federal government does not have a formal non-enforcement policy, it appears to have one in practice in the Western District based in Madison.2 The recent history in the Eastern District is more complex and seems related to leadership change.
Difference between two districts
Wisconsin’s Eastern District covers the Green Bay and Milwaukee divisions and includes the state’s 28 eastern counties.3 The Western District includes the state’s 44 other counties and holds court in Madison.4
The Eastern and Western districts generally had similar trends from 2017 through 2019. Both had fewer than a handful of marijuana enforcement cases each year. Beginning in 2020, the Eastern District significantly ramped up the number of people sentenced for federal cannabis crimes while the Western District had zero cases for four years.
Leadership drives priorities
Academic research shows that leadership and staffing in a prosecutor office has a direct impact of the number and type of cases brought.5
In the years when the Eastern District had the highest levels of enforcement, 2021 and 2022, Richard G. Frohling, a career federal prosecutor, served as acting U.S. attorney. In September 2022, President Biden appointed and the Senate confirmed Gregory J. Haanstad to the U.S. Attorney post.6 Prosecutions returned to prior levels after that in 2023.
Frohling is now again serving as the acting U.S. attorney after President Trump removed Haanstad from office in February.7
Asked whether there had been any change in policy regarding the enforcement of cannabis laws, a spokesman for the Eastern District told the Badger Institute that the office “at all times has prosecuted federal criminal matters in accordance with federal criminal law and national policies of the Department of Justice. We would receive referrals from federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement and act accordingly.”
Composition of federal cases in Wisconsin
I partnered with experts at Recidiviz, a non-profit specializing in criminal justice data analysis and modeling, to compile the raw case data on all federal cannabis cases in Wisconsin resolved from 2021 through 2023.
That analysis determined that the cases involved individuals engaged in criminal conduct stemming from marijuana violations. In other words, these were not cases wherein a defendant was simultaneously prosecuted for a more serious non-cannabis-related primary offense.
At the same time, the cannabis offenses charged usually involved more than just possession. Out of the 50 cases analyzed, only three involved mere possession of cannabis rather than trafficking or manufacturing.
The remaining 47 cases present a slightly more complex but still straightforward situation. In total, those cases involve 110 distinct federal crimes, of which none are crimes wholly independent of the underlying cannabis crimes. All are cannabis, cannabis plus, or cannabis-related crimes (see sidebar for explanation of these categories).
Federal statutes regarding cannabis and related crimes are complex, overlap with each other, and frequently rely on an intricate web of dependent relationships. To reduce that complexity, I have grouped federal statutory crimes into four categories:
Cannabis: violations that are themselves solely prohibitions on the possession, sale, manufacturing and distribution of cannabis.
Cannabis plus: violations that are not drug crimes but statutorily require a simultaneous cannabis offense as an element that must be proven for a conviction. Examples include possession of a firearm and cannabis simultaneously and owning a home where cannabis was sold.
Cannabis-related: violations that occur during a cannabis offense but do not require such an offense be proven as an element of this crime. An example is fraud to enable possession of a firearm during cannabis trafficking.
Wholly independent: violations not dependent on or related to a cannabis offense. This includes violent and property crimes as well as the possession or trafficking of other drugs.
As an example, one case involves an individual sentenced in the Eastern District with the following three crimes:
- Manufacture, distribute, or possess with intent — marijuana;8
- Use or possession of a firearm during drug trafficking;9
- Trafficking 1,000 kilograms or more or 1,000 or more marijuana plants.10
This raw data tells us that the individual possessed a large quantity of cannabis and was found to have been possessing it with the intent to sell it to someone else. In addition, we can see that he simultaneously possessed a firearm while possessing the cannabis. The first and third crimes are cannabis offenses, while the second is a cannabis plus offense (see sidebar).
Digging deeper, we find that 16 of the cases involved 22 cannabis plus crimes, including possessing a firearm, maintaining a property where cannabis was manufactured, sold or used, and assisting someone who has committed a cannabis crime to prevent apprehension. Another five cases involve a charge for two cannabis-related crimes, such as fraud to enable possession of a firearm during drug trafficking11 and utilizing threat or violence to obstruct or delay commerce to facilitate drug trafficking.12
At their core, these cases show that individuals did engage in prohibited actions beyond mere possession and sale of cannabis but that these actions were essentially conducted to facilitate or enable that possession or sale. These are not the “additional crimes” many of us think about drug dealers engaging in alongside their drug trade or usually see in dramatized stories on television. Those are usually more serious, such as murder, kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking.
This analysis reveals that federal districts, even with the divergence noted above, mimic the overall state and local status quo: minimal or non-existent enforcement of laws on the books.
Across the board, no level of government appears to be highly motivated to enforce cannabis prohibition in the Badger State. The findings of this article add even more weight to our earlier conclusion that in many parts of the state, its leaders “have essentially decriminalized the possession or sale of marijuana.”
Jeremiah Mosteller is an attorney and criminal justice policy expert who serves as a policy director at Americans for Prosperity and a visiting fellow at the Badger Institute.
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1 21 U.S. Code § 812 (2025); 841 (2025).
2 See e.g. Letter from James M. Cole, Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice to all United States Attorneys (August 29, 2013); See also United States Sentencing Commission, supra note v (showing that the number of people sentenced for federal cannabis crimes has declined by nearly 80% since 2017).
3 United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Counties Served by District, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (2025), https://www.wied.uscourts.gov/counties-served-division.
4 United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Jurisdiction, United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (2025), https://www.wiwd.uscourts.gov/jurisdiction.
5 Catherine A. Grodensky, The Effect of the Elected Chief Prosecutor on Punitiveness in Local Courtrooms, __ Crim. Just. Rev. __ (forthcoming, 2024); Maria E. Arndt, Examining the Gap Between Prosecutor Attitudes and Decisions: Case Prioritization Through Case Elimination Mechanisms in Driving With a Suspended License Cases, 47 Crim. Just. Rev. 243 (2022); Mona Lynch, et al., Prosecutors, court communities, and policy change: The impact of internal DOJ reforms on federal prosecutorial practices, 59 Criminology 480 (2021).
6 United States Attorney Office, Gregory J. Haanstad sworn in as United States Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice (2022), https://www.justice.gov/usao-edwi/pr/gregory-j-haanstad-sworn-united-states-attorney; Sierra Rehm, US attorney for Eastern Wisconsin announces resignation, WAOW News 9 (2021), https://www.waow.com/archive/us-attorney-for-eastern-wisconsin-announces-resignation/article_96884049-8d80-599a-8e37-6afae68b8dcf.html.
7 Chris Ramirez, Here are the people who have served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (2025), https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2025/02/20/heres-who-has-served-as-u-s-attorney-for-eastern-wisconsin/79314791007/.
8 21 U.S. Code § 841(a)(1) (2025).
9 18 U.S. Code § 924(c)(1) (2025).
10 21 U.S. Code § 841(b)(1) (2025).
11 18 U.S. Code § 924(a)(2) (2025) (prohibiting the following acts with regards to firearms: fraud to enable possession or use of a firearm during drug trafficking; knowingly transporting or receiving a firearm for someone who cannot legally possess it; knowingly transporting or receiving a stolen firearm; or possessing a machine gun).
12 18 U.S. Code § 1951 (2025).
