“It’s kinda flattering that they changed Pennsylvania law just for me,” he said. He added he only planned to take the flags down once the state legalized marijuana and approved human rights protections for LGBTQ citizens.

by Stephen Caruso, Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Harrisburg Republicans are sick and tired of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s flags. So, they’re banning him from flying them.

A temporary budget set to pass this week is on track to include a provision prohibiting any flag except the American flag, Pennsylvania’s state flag, or a flag honoring missing American soldiers from flying over the state Capitol building or Capitol grounds.

The draft language also bans banners, posters, or temporary signage from hanging in the Capitol’s external windows, balconies or alcoves.

The move is a transparent shot at Fetterman, who has flown an LGBTQ pride flag and a marijuana legalization flag from his office’s balcony — a prime piece of Capitol real estate that overlooks the building’s front steps and can be seen blocks away in downtown Harrisburg. 

Shouting from my balcony. Literally.

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) November 18, 2020

The provision was tucked into the state’s fiscal code, an omnibus bill passed every year with the budget that includes instructions on spending. The bill often becomes a vehicle for lawmakers to enact policy changes big and small – from tweaks to state alternative energy law to a rule regulating Capitol flags.

The language was included in an amendment filed by Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, Friday.

Through his spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher, Corman didn’t take responsibility for the flag ban. 

Kocher said she didn’t know who wrote the flag provision, and that the amendment Corman introduced represented the entirety of the agreed-upon fiscal code — a document that receives input from leaders in the House, Senate and executive branch. 

Fetterman declined to comment for this article Friday, but took to Twitter after it was published.

“It’s kinda flattering that they changed Pennsylvania law just for me,” he said. He added he only planned to take the flags down once the state legalized marijuana and approved human rights protections for LGBTQ citizens.

It’s kinda flattering that they changed Pennsylvania law just for me. 🥺👉👈

Speaking of changing laws…

I’ll take them down when we get:

LEGAL WEED 🟩 FOR PA + EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW for LGBTQIA+ community in PA.
⬛️🟫🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪 https://t.co/B8XMXqcVZJ

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) November 20, 2020

As Gov. Tom Wolf’s second-in-command, Fetterman has used his bully pulpit to champion progressive causes and cut a visible profile in national media. 

His job also requires him to preside over the state Senate—a role that’s seen him clash with Republican lawmakers. 

Republicans said Fetterman failed to do his job in June 2019 when he didn’t sanction Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery, as she launched a protest on the Senate floor against a vote to eliminate a cash welfare program. 

The episode led to a shouting match as Republican leaders implored Fetterman to enforce the chamber’s rules and accused him of acting “like a partisan hack.”

The Republican caucus sent Fetterman a letter one week later, telling him to learn Senate procedures or cede his rostrum to someone else. 

Fetterman’s use of flags has seemingly stuck in Republicans’ minds. Speaking at a Capitol rally earlier this month, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, derided the marijuana flag Fetterman displays inside his office, which does not appear to be impacted by the rider in the fiscal code. 

“I walk into the Capitol there and I see the grandeur of the building there, and I walk in and [think] ‘how did someone like Doug Mastriano get into this building?’” Mastriano said. “My dad was a high school dropout. And then I go up the steps by the Senate and I see Fetterman’s office with a weed flag and I’m like, ‘I guess I can be here; you can do far worse than me.’”

This story was first published by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news outlets supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

There’s A ’50-50 Chance Connecticut Will Legalize Marijuana In 2021, New House Speaker Says

Photo courtesy of Jurassic Blueberries.

Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider a monthly Patreon pledge.

As more of its neighboring states move to legalize marijuana, Connecticut is increasingly likely to enact the reform itself, incoming House Speaker Matt Ritter (D) said on Thursday. He put the chances of state lawmakers passing a legalization bill during next year’s legislative session at 50–50., and said that the body should hold a vote on the issue regardless of whether it has enough support to pass.

“It is now legal in New Jersey, New York is coming, and it’s legal in Massachusetts,” Ritter said at a virtual meeting hosted by a business organization. “Connecticut cannot fortify its border.”

Lawmakers in neighboring Rhode Island also recently took up a legalization bill there at a hearing this week, and top lawmakers in the state are preparing a push to end cannabis prohibition in 2021.

Connecticut residents—including people he knows personally—are already traveling to Massachusetts to buy legal marijuana and bringing it back to the state, Ritter said in his new comments.

“I have a lot of neighbors and friends that go to work every day who take care of their families,” the incoming speaker said. “They go to Northampton, they buy pot. They drive back, and they are still practicing responsible adults. You can’t just pretend that it’s not all around you and readily available.”

As for legalization in Connecticut, “I think it’s got a 50–50 chance of passing this year,” he said, “and I think you should have a vote regardless.”

Ritter has been a vocal proponent of marijuana reform in Connecticut and said earlier this month that legalization in the state is “inevitable.” His remarks this week came during a meeting with the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association, which was first reported by the Hartford Courant.

Watch the speaker’s marijuana comments, about 53:35 into the video below:

Sen. Kevin Kelly (R), the incoming Senate minority leader, also spoke at Thursday’s meeting. He said Connecticut doesn’t necessarily need to legalize simply because its neighbors are doing so.

“Just because other states do it doesn’t necessarily mean that Connecticut must do it,” he said. “I think we have to look at what our own people, what our own families want and what we hear from our constituents and decide whether or not this is something that, as a social policy, is good for our state and the youth of our state. Is it something that we want them to be engaging in and to be utilizing on a daily basis or more frequently than they’re allowed to?”

Recent studies indicate legalization has not caused an increase in teen marijuana use. A report from Colorado in August concluded that youth cannabis consumption “has not significantly changed since legalization” in 2012, while a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that same month found that marijuana use by high school students actually fell between 2013 and 2019. A report published just this week by the CDC found that teen marijuana treatment admissions fell sharply in states that had legalized.

Kelly, the Senate GOP leader, also noted at Thursday’s meeting that lawmakers in other states have been motivated to legalize marijuana in order to boost state revenue. Legal cannabis industries in some states have fueled billions in economic activity and brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to state budgets.

Ritter, however, claimed not to care about revenue. Rather, he said he’s motivated more by a desire “to right historical wrongs,” citing his own observations of racial disparities in marijuana-related arrests.

“For too long, black and brown people in cities back in the ’80s and ’90s went to jail for marijuana offenses,” he said, while college students and suburban residents “smoke with impunity.”

“The expungement of those criminal violations is very important to me,” Ritter added.

Kelly acknowledged the issue cuts across party lines. “I really don’t think this is a Republican–Democrat, necessarily, view,” he said. “It’s more individualized than that. And it will depend upon where one’s perspective is and where they come in on legalization.”

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said earlier this month that legalizing marijuana could prevent the spread of COVID-19 by people traveling to neighboring states to buy marijuana. Officials have “got to think regionally when it comes to how we deal with the pandemic,” he said, “and I think we have to think regionally when it comes to marijuana, as well.”

U.S. voters’ passage of every major state-level drug reform measure on the ballot on Election Day this month has already spurred action by officials and organizers in neighboring states, including New York, Rhode Island and others. In many states where cannabis was on the ballot, legalization got more votes than either Donald Trump’s or Joe Biden’s presidential bids.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) told Marijuana Moment after Election Day that the overwhelming results are likely to encourage reform at the federal level.

Mexican Senate Passes Bill To Legalize Marijuana Nationwide

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“One thing is certain: sharing your ballot with cannabis will embarrass you. In the red states, in the blue states and in the battleground states, pot is more popular than the pols.”

By Don Murphy, Marijuana Policy Project

I should be fired.

For the past four years, I have tried to convince my party and my president to embrace marijuana policy reform. It should have been easy. After all, it is consistent with our core beliefs of freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility and federalism. But I failed.

I know from personal experience as a former legislator who was the original lead sponsor of my state’s first medical marijuana law that drug policy advocacy by a Republican is not the third rail everyone reflexively assumes it to be. Either because of, or in spite of, my advocacy over the past 20 years, I was also elected by Maryland’s most partisan Republicans to be a party chair and four-time RNC convention delegate, once as delegation chair and twice for Trump.

As a candidate, Trump said he was in favor of medical marijuana… “100 percent.” He also said he knew sick people who use marijuana for medical purposes and that, “it really does help them.” I knew then that he was sympathetic to patients and to our cause. And he thought legalizing marijuana should be left up to the states. I was dealt a pretty good hand.

During the 2016 election, four blue states passed adult-use marijuana ballot initiatives. One in Arizona failed by two points. Arkansas, Montana and North Dakota passed medical marijuana with 53 percent, 58 percent and 64 percent respectively. In Florida, medical marijuana received 71 percent of the vote, besting Trump by 1.9 million votes (6,519,000 for Measure 2 and 4,618,000 for Trump).

In battleground Florida, pot was more popular than the president, and Trump apparently noticed. His vocal support for Senator Cory Gardner’s STATES Act suggested that the drug war he had inherited would be another of the endless wars that would cease under his leadership.

In 2018, battleground Michigan passed commercial cannabis with 56 percent of the vote. Ruby red states Utah, Oklahoma and Missouri passed medical with 53 percent, 57 percent and 67 percent of the vote respectively and cost one Republican congresswoman her seat. Surely the Trump Administration noticed. Yet they never acted.

The Democrats won the House, and with its ‘leave it to the states’ attitude the STATES Act wasn’t comprehensive enough. It died without a vote. Progressives replaced STATES with the MORE Act, which proved too heavy to get off the runway. It has yet to get a floor vote.

Knowing he agreed with the policy and could witness firsthand the value of the politics, I was just waiting for executive action. In August, in anticipation of an ‘October Surprise,’ MPP hand-delivered to the administration a list of what Trump could do to bring this civil war to an end. Yet they never acted.

When it was apparent that the Democratic nominee would be the author of the ‘94 crime bill, Joe Biden, the RNC and the Trump campaign were quick to juxtapose Trump’s criminal justice reform efforts with Biden’s “lock ‘em up” history. But it was difficult to make the case that Biden was bad on cannabis when Trump wasn’t yet good on cannabis. Trump’s vocal support of STATES was negated by his nomination of Jeff “good people don’t smoke pot” Sessions as Attorney General and Sessions’ subsequent repeal of the Cole Memo.

Finally in August, the president blamed marijuana ballot initiatives for the defeat of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for bringing “out like a million people that nobody ever knew were coming out.” I knew then that Trump understood the benefit of being on the right side of reform. Yet he never acted.

Maybe Trump is right, maybe not. According to an analysis by Marijuana Moment, one thing is certain: sharing your ballot with cannabis will embarrass you. In the red states, in the blue states and in the battleground states, pot is more popular than the pols. This year, medical cannabis beat the president in South Dakota and Mississippi. Adult-use bested all the Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates in Montana and beat both Trump and Biden in New Jersey and Arizona.

If Trump is correct, there is a certain irony that, less than three months after his remarks to Walker, cannabis got 60 percent, Trump 49 percent in battleground Arizona. His margin was razor thin. In a race where everything mattered, marijuana votes mattered. Did being on the wrong side of cannabis not only embarrass Trump (and McSally) in Arizona, but also cost him the state’s 11 electoral votes and maybe the White House? Based on his comments in Wisconsin, Trump must think so.

Either way, someone should get fired.

Don Murphy is the director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, a former Maryland legislator and four-time Republican National Committee Convention Delegate.

Marijuana Legalization Got More Votes Than Trump, Biden And Other Officials In Multiple States

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