Politics
Pennsylvania Senate Democrats Highlight Need To Legalize Marijuana With New Hearing
Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania’s Senate are stepping up the push to legalize marijuana in the state by scheduling a hearing focused on the issue for this week.
The Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Policy Committee will host the meeting on Friday to “examine modernizing the commonwealth’s adult use cannabis laws,” according to an announcement.
The committee’s chair, Sen. Nick Miller (D) will lead the hearing, alongside Sen. Sharif Street (D), who has long championed marijuana reform and has sponsored several bills to enact legalization.
“The focus will include enforcement and safety needs, social and economic considerations, as well as how to ensure that meaningful criminal justice reform updates are included,” the committee’s announcement said.
The hearing, titled “Adult-Use Cannabis: Criminal Justice, Safety & Economic Impacts,” will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Philadelphia and is set to follow a separate summit event that is part of the 9th annual Cannabis Opportunities Conference that’s also being held at the hotel.
The event comes as Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania continue to push for marijuana legalization, including with a discharge resolution that Street filed seeking to bring a bipartisan cannabis legalization bill out of committee.
The measure, which was signed by every Democratic senator, aims to increase pressure on the chamber’s Republican majority to allow a vote on legalizing cannabis.
The bill in question is sponsored by Street along with Sen. Dan Laughlin (R), who chairs the Senate Law & Justice Committee but hasn’t called the legislation up for consideration in the panel.
The GOP chairman has instead focused on moving a separate bill to create a new Cannabis Control Board to regulate medical marijuana and hemp. That measure failed on the Senate floor in June amid partisan fighting about the best way forward for cannabis in the state.
The marijuana legalization bill that Street wants to advance, SB 120, would allow adults aged 21 and older to possess up to 30 grams of cannabis flower, 1,000 milligrams of THC in edible products and 5 grams of concentrate.
It would also create a process to expunge prior marijuana-related criminal records.
If enacted, there would be an 8 percent excise tax on cannabis sales, alongside the state’s regular sales tax of 6 percent.
The legislative maneuvering around the bill comes as a recent poll shows that Pennsylvania voters overwhelmingly support marijuana legalization—and that the largest share put the blame on Republican lawmakers for the fact that the state has not yet enacted the reform.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has repeatedly called on lawmakers to send him a marijuana legalization bill and for the last several years has included the reform in his budget requests to the legislature.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity, who is running against Shapiro, recently pledged to veto a marijuana legalization bill if lawmakers ever sent one to her desk—though she added that she doesn’t think the reform stands a chance of making it that far in the state.
Her running mate for lieutenant governor, Jason Richey, claimed that legalizing marijuana would be “catastrophic” for the state, arguing it would increase the size of the illegal market, undermine job creation and harm public health.
The governor earlier this year, as he has in past years, included cannabis legalization and the resulting expected revenue in his budget request.
The House last year passed a bill to legalize marijuana and put sales in state-owned dispensaries, but the Republican Senate majority has criticized that plan while also not advancing a cannabis legalization model of its own.
The state’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) reported in February that legalizing cannabis in Pennsylvania would generate nearly half a billion dollars in annual revenue by 2028, an estimate that is a significantly larger cash windfall compared to projections from Shapiro’s own office.
A spokesperson in the governor’s office said the Trump administration’s federal marijuana rescheduling move is an “important step” that “adds support” to his push to legalize cannabis. A GOP senator also said that federal reform will make it easier to legalize marijuana in the state.
—
Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.
Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.
—
Meanwhile, Laughlin is blaming the governor for the defeat of his bill to create a new Cannabis Control Board (CCB) to oversee the state’s medical marijuana program and intoxicating hemp products and that could also one day oversee recreational cannabis if it is legalized.
Most GOP senators in the Republican-controlled chamber voted for the legislation from Laughlin, and all but two Democrats opposed it—with even some lawmakers who signed onto the measure as cosponsors ultimately voting against it.
The measure would transfer regulatory authority for the state’s existing medical cannabis program from the Department of Health to a new seven-member CCB. The body would oversee cannabis permits, enforcement, seed-to-sale tracking, advertising, labeling, testing and other aspects of the legal industry.
Moments after the bill’s defeat on the Senate floor, the chamber adopted a motion to reconsider—but it’s not yet clear when or if the legislation will get another vote.
Laughlin’s legislation would also significantly restrict most hemp THC products, aligning the state with a new federal policy that is set to take effect later this year recriminalizing preparations with total THC content of more than 0.3 percent on a dry-weight basis or more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container.
The action on the cannabis regulatory bill, SB 49, came shortly after the House of Representatives passed a bill to allow terminally ill patients to use medical cannabis in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
