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 (D) has called for legalization in his past two budget requests, projecting a significant windfall of tax revenue for the Keystone State which he says is currently being lost to surrounding states that have implemented legal cannabis markets.
“Frankly, we’re losing all kinds of revenue to other states,” Shapiro told The Philadelphia Inquirer this month.
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.
But the prospects of advancing any adult-use legalization measure remain in question, with top Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R) stating that there are logistical challenges that he’s unsure lawmakers will be able to overcome.
“It’s a practicality issue more than a philosophical issue,” he said, referencing the continued federal prohibition on cannabis and his concerns about the state’s ability to effectively regulate a cannabis market.
“Obviously, this state has not done well in rolling out medical marijuana,” the top GOP lawmaker argued. “We’ve not demonstrated our ability to have the bureaucracy manage something of that magnitude.”
House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D), however, indicated that he feels the time is ripe to advance reform this session, saying “it strikes me as abdicating our responsibility to protect our communities and our children, and at the same time, we are losing revenue that is going to go into our neighboring states.”
“Yes, our numbers are close, but we are confident that we can get our numbers together and show that there is a path forward on cannabis,” he said of the possible vote tally on a legalization bill.
Meanwhile, the new Republican state attorney general of Pennsylvania recently raised concerns about the “potential harm that could be caused criminally” by enacting 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.
The Republican chair of a key Senate committee recently said he’s expecting to take up legislation this year that would make Pennsylvania the 25th in the U.S. to legalize adult-use marijuana. He also thinks that more of his GOP colleagues could get on board with the reform soon than have in the past.
Sen. Dan Laughlin (R), a proponent of cannabis reform in past sessions, chairs the Senate Law and Justice Committee and said this month he expects the panel to “be one of the most active committees in the state” in the new session.
While many legalization advocates and observers think Pennsylvania is among the most likely states to pass a recreational marijuana law this session, the devil is in the details. 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. While it didn’t move forward, the lawmaker said in the recent interview that he believes political support for legalization more broadly has been building.
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 said sponsors hope for a vote on the bill “sometime early spring,” though questions remain as to whether the legislature would be willing to get behind the push to end cannabis prohibition, especially through the state-run sales model he is proposing.
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. Currently, low-level possession is considered a misdemeanor, carrying a penalty of up to 30 days in jail, a 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.
As Pennsylvania’s legislature reconvenes amid rising pressure to enact legalization, advocates view the comments from Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R) as a positive sign that the dam on cannabis reform measures might be weakening in the commonwealth.
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.
Since then, further federal court cases have questioned the constitutionality of the federal firearm 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 court allowed the man to withdraw the plea and ordered that the indictment against him be dismissed.
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