Pennsylvania

Keystoners, it doesn’t look as if recreational-use cannabis is coming to Pennsylvania any time soon.

Although another push for legalization is underway in the state legislature — the same push that’s been ongoing since before the pandemic — there still isn’t enough bipartisan support to get recreational marijuana on shelves in Pennsylvania.

Last year, The Inquirer spoke with state legislators, lawyers, and policy wonks in the cannabis arena to better understand how and when Pennsylvania will legalize recreational marijuana for adults. At the time, many developments led optimists to believe it was around the corner.

A year ago, President Joe Biden announced pardons for simple marijuana possession and a review of its scheduling under federal law. On the state level, the first-ever bipartisan marijuana legalization bill was introduced in the Pennsylvania State Senate. And then-Gov. Tom Wolf said he’d sign a legalization bill into law if it reached his desk.

Yet, the legalization or decriminalization of recreational marijuana still hasn’t happened in Pennsylvania, where two out of every three registered voters support adult-use cannabis, according to a 2022 CBS News poll.

So what’s next?

Because Pennsylvania is one of 24 states that do not have initiative and referendum processes that would allow citizens to vote on measures such as marijuana legalization — as happened in 2020 in New Jersey — any change would have to go through the state legislature.

Currently, there’s one bipartisan recreational marijuana legalization bill on the table.

SB846, an adult-use cannabis bill, is being studied within the Senate’s Law and Justice Committee (chaired by Republican State Sen. Mike Regan, one of the few Senate Republicans openly supporting legalization), bringing it closer to a possible vote. This is the second attempt at legalization by Erie-area Republican State Sen. Dan Laughlin and Philly-area Democrat State Sen. Sharif Street, who both authored the first bipartisan bill.

On a related note, Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has publicly supported legalization since 2019, proposed a 20% tax on revenue of adult-use cannabis in the 2024-2025 budget, anticipating legalization passing in that time. Shapiro’s tax proposal estimates that adult-use sales will begin on Jan. 1, 2025. But that doesn’t mean anything unless the legislature legalizes recreational marijuana first.

While all of these developments may seem promising for legalization, recreational marijuana still needs bipartisan support — something that’s expected to be a slow burn.

Bipartisan support of recreational marijuana

In recent years, a number of legalization, decriminalization, and regulation bills were introduced in Pennsylvania, including the previous Laughlin-Street legalization bill. They all failed to make it out of committees to be officially voted on, essentially “killing” the bills.

Without wider Republican support, SB846 won’t make it to the Senate voting floor either, which is Republican-controlled.

According to Democratic State Sen. Jay Costa, the Senate minority leader, the Democratic Caucus is mostly in favor of legalizing adult-use cannabis in some fashion, but they alone won’t be able to make it happen.

“If the [SB846] came up for a vote in our caucus, I think it would enjoy overwhelming support, but that doesn’t get us enough votes to get it across the finish line in the Senate,” Costa said. “I don’t believe that we’ve entirely reached a consensus on the scope of what legalization would look like. That’s going to have to be resolved through conversations with Senate Republicans and the folks in the House and Shapiro administration.”

The spokesperson for the Senate Republican Caucus, Kate Flessner, said it’s too early in the legislative process for Republican leadership to give input on the passage of SB846. However, the Senate majority leader, Republican State Sen. Kim Ward, stated last November that the federal government would need to end prohibition on cannabis before she would be ready to discuss legalization in Pennsylvania, reported Spotlight PA.

State Sen. Chris Gebhard, a Republican serving Lebanon County, believes in the success of the seven-year-old medical marijuana program. He even passed legislation that aims to level the playing field for local, smaller medical marijuana growers through bills like SB773, that allow them to sell directly to approved patients.

However, Gebhard’s not ready to “rush” into recreational marijuana legalization just yet.

“I think our medical system is working very well. We hear from stakeholders that we have a system where it’s honestly not that difficult to get a medical card,” Gebhard said. “We do hear from the general public across the state and through conversations within the capital building that there’s certainly some energy behind moving in the direction [of legalization]. I’m just of the belief that I don’t think we’re there yet.”

For SB846 to pass in the Senate, the legislation needs support from all 22 Democrats and the support of at least seven Republicans. There are at least two Senate Republicans, Laughlin and Regan, who openly support legalization.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is a different story as it most recently shifted to a slight Democratic majority after last November’s elections. Democrats in the House say they’ll review the bill if or when it passes the Senate, according to a spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus.

What’s in the Senate recreational marijuana legalization bill?

SB846 includes provisions for decriminalization (including record expungement for low-level offenses) and social equity efforts that would make entering the legal cannabis industry more accessible to smaller businesses and those with cannabis-related convictions. It also allows for home delivery services and on-site consumption at licensed adult-use dispensaries.

However, the bill’s wording around driving under the influence confuses advocates like Chris Goldstein, the regional organizer for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

As the bill reads now, any person who has any amount of “marijuana, cannabis, a cannabis concentrate or a cannabis-infused product” in their blood could be arrested for DUI. Goldstein advises that this wording is misguided due to THC (the psychoactive compound in cannabis) being able to stay in a person’s system for up to 30 days after consumption, putting many people who consume marijuana legally at risk of DUI even if they haven’t consumed cannabis in weeks. (The Inquirer has a guide on what to do if you’re pulled over after using cannabis.)

“The Street-Laughlin bill has some flawed ideas, especially in restating the zero-tolerance THC policy for DUI,” Goldstein said. “I’m not sure that any state has banned cannabis consumers from driving in a legalization bill, but essentially, that’s what this bill does.”

If recreational marijuana legalization passes, when will legal sales begin?

If the Laughlin-Street bill is signed into law, existing medical dispensaries could start selling cannabis to adult consumers within 180 days of passage after they pay an initial $25,000 licensing fee, according to Olivia Naugle, senior policy analyst at the Marijuana Policy Project. “In exchange for the head-start, states, like Maryland did, often include a significant fee and/or an incubator-type program so that medical cannabis businesses must assist new businesses run by those who have been the most impacted by prohibition,” she said.

But, remember that even when a state passes legalization, there are many regulatory hoops to jump through that often take around a year (or two years in Delaware’s case) to iron out before legal sales begin and recreational marijuana comes to more towns, as was the case with New Jersey and New York.

Until adults can start buying cannabis from recreational marijuana dispensaries in Pennsylvania, legalization advocates say millions of dollars in tax revenue will flock across Pennsylvania’s borders. Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office told the Senate in 2021 that recreational marijuana could generate $400 million to $1 billion in new tax revenue for the state.