The governor of Pennsylvania will once again put marijuana legalization in his budget request this year—but the pathway to enact the reform remains murky in the legislature, as GOP leadership continues to cast doubts about the practicality of the proposal.
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) budget request for his last two years has included a call for legalization. He argues that the Keystone State is losing out on a windfall in tax revenues to states around it who have legalized cannabis.
Shapiro, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter this month, said: “Frankly we are losing many kinds of revenues to other states.”
Whether he will make any adjustments to past proposals when the budget is released next week—including potential tweaks to his call to impose a relatively high tax rate of 20 percent on cannabis products—remains to be seen.
The prospects for advancing a legalization of adult use remain uncertain. Senate Majority leader Joe Pittman, a top Republican, has stated that there are many logistical issues that lawmakers may not be able overcome.
He said that the issue was more of a “practicality issue” than one that is philosophical. In his remarks, he referred to the federal government’s continued prohibition against cannabis as well as the inability of the state to regulate the cannabis market effectively.
The top GOP legislator argued that “clearly, this state did not do well” in rolling out the medical marijuana. We haven’t shown that we can manage a project of this magnitude.
House Majority Matt Bradford, however, said that this is the right time to reform the system. “It strikes me as an abdication of our responsibility to safeguard our communities, our children and to the same token, we lose revenue to neighboring states.”
He said, “Yes, we’re close in numbers, but we believe we can put our numbers together to show there is progress on the cannabis issue.”
The new Republican attorney general for Pennsylvania has recently expressed concern about “potential criminal harm” that may be caused by the implementation of the reform.
“From a policy perspective, what I can say is—and this is something that I said all throughout the campaign—regardless of what policy issue we’re talking about… you have to have voices from from from all parts of the community on this, and I would be remiss as a prosecutor and now as a chief law enforcement officer for Pennsylvania if I wasn’t a voice outlining the potential harm that could be caused criminally as a result of that,” Attorney General Dave Sunday (R) said.
He said that he expects to introduce legislation in this year to make Pennsylvania one of 25 states to have legalized adult-use cannabis. He also thinks that more of his GOP colleagues could get on board with the reform soon than have in the past.
Dan Laughlin is the Senate Law and Justice Committee Chair. He has advocated cannabis reforms before and this month he said he anticipates that the Senate Law and Justice Committee will “be among the most active in the state in the next session.”
The devil lies in the detail. While legalization activists and observers consider Pennsylvania to be one of the more likely states this year to pass an recreational marijuana law, there are still many details that need attention. One lawmaker has floated a relatively simple bill to decriminalize personal possession, while two others plan to introduce more sweeping legislation that would legalize through a state-run system of stores.
Laughlin, a longtime legalization advocate, last spring introduced a bill meant to remove state barriers to medical marijuana patients carrying firearms. Laughlin, a long-time legalization advocate, introduced a bill last spring to remove state barriers that prevented medical marijuana patients from carrying firearms.
The senator said an event last May that the state is “getting close” to legalizing marijuana, but the job will only get done if House and Senate leaders sit down with the governor and “work it out.”
Reps. Dan Frankel (D) and Rick Krajewski (D) announced last month that they planned to file legalization legislation, emphasizing that there’s a “moral obligation” to repair harms of criminalization while also raising revenue as neighboring state markets mature.
Frankel, who is one of the sponsors for the bill, said that they hope it will be voted on “sometime during early spring,” but there are still questions about whether the Legislature would support his push to eliminate cannabis prohibition through the model of state-run sale he proposes.
A separate decriminalization measure, meanwhile, from Pennsylvania Rep. Danilo Burgos (D), would make simple possession of cannabis a summary offense punishable by a $100 fine without the threat of jail time. Current law considers low-level cannabis possession a misdemeanor that can result in up to 30days of jail time, maximum $500 fine, or both.
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Additionally, in September, bipartisan Reps. Aaron Kaufer (R) and Emily Kinkead (D) formally introduced a bipartisan marijuana legalization bill, alongside 15 other cosponsors.
In July, the governor said his administration and lawmakers would “come back and continue to fight” for marijuana legalization and other policy priorities that were omitted from budget legislation he signed into law that month.
Meanwhile, a top GOP Pennsylvania senator who has long expressed concerns about marijuana legalization told advocates recently that she’s against arresting people over cannabis, noting that the policy change could protect her son and disclosing that if it weren’t for marijuana, she might not have met her husband, according to an activist who spoke with her.
The comments of Senate Pro Tempore Kim Ward, (R), as Pennsylvania’s legislative body reconvenes in response to increasing pressure for legalization measures are seen by advocates as positive signs that there may be a weakening dam against cannabis reform measures.
As for medical marijuana, the governor in October signed a bill to correct an omission in a law that unintentionally excluded dispensaries from state-level tax relief for the medical marijuana industry.
About three months after the legislature approved the underlying budget bill that Shapiro signed containing tax reform provisions as a partial workaround to a federal ban on tax deductions for cannabis businesses, the Pennsylvania legislature passed corrective legislation.
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/past-marijuana-use-shouldnt-disqualify-for-security-clearances-trumps-intel-director-pick-tulsi-gabbard-says-but-ongoing-use-is-more-complex/Separately, at a Black Cannabis Week event hosted recently by the Diasporic Alliance for Cannabis Opportunities (DACO) in October, Street and Reps. Chris Rabb (D), Amen Brown (D), Darisha Parker (D) and Napoleon Nelson (D) joined activists to discuss their legislative priorities and motivations behind advancing legalization in the Keystone State.
Other lawmakers have also emphasized the urgency of legalizing as soon as possible given regional dynamics, while signaling that legislators are close to aligning House and Senate proposals.
As for cannabis and gun ownership, Laughlin had been looking at the issue for more than a year before introducing last year’s bill, writing last February to the state’s acting police commissioner to “strongly encourage” he review a federal ruling that the U.S. government’s ban on gun ownership by people who use marijuana is unconstitutional.
In the years since, other federal court cases have challenged the constitutionality the federal gun ban. A federal judge in El Paso, for example, recently ruled that the ongoing ban on gun ownership by habitual marijuana users was unconstitutional in the case of a defendant who earlier pleaded guilty to the criminal charge. The man was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. He also had the charges against him dismissed.
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