Pennsylvania Lawmakers Announce New Marijuana Bill To Catch Up With Neighboring States That Have Already Legalized

Two Pennsylvania lawmakers have announced plans to file a new bill to legalize marijuana in the commonwealth to fulfill a “moral obligation” to repair harms of criminalization while also raising revenue.

With the state’s Democratic caucus emboldened after retaining the House in last month’s elections—and Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D) saying there’s a “will” in the chamber to “move forward” with cannabis reform—Reps. Rick Krajewski (D) and Rep. Dan Frankel (D) are now circulating a cosponsorship memo to build support for the forthcoming legislation.

“As a state that continues to criminalize recreational cannabis, Pennsylvania is now an outlier—24 states have legalized the practice, including 5 of the 6 states that border Pennsylvania,” the legislators, who led a series of hearings on cannabis reform over the past year, said.

“But legal or not, Pennsylvanians are consuming marijuana, whether by visiting our bordering states, buying unregulated hemp loophole products at gas stations and vape shops, or purchasing in the illicit market,” they said.

Notably, the memo doesn’t mention the prospect of a state-run cannabis market, which Frankel, who chairs the Health Committee, had previously floated as a possibility. Last year he said that the model is “certainly an option.”

“We have a moral obligation to not only legalize but also to work to repair the damage caused by decades of marijuana arrests,” Frankel said in a press release about the new legislation on Monday. “Our bill will deliver a market that protects the public health, benefits our taxpayers and uplifts those communities that were disproportionately harmed by prohibition policies.”

Today, Rep. Rick Krajewski and I began gathering support for our bill to decriminalize and regulate adult-use cannabis. Criminalization has harmed too many folks. It’s time to move ahead like other states have and start reaping the public revenue benefits.https://t.co/b4j72hD7ge pic.twitter.com/kfOpyYmw0G

— State Rep. Dan Frankel (@RepDanFrankel) December 2, 2024

Krajewski, chair of the Health Subcommittee on Health Care, said lawmakers have heard from health professionals, law enforcement officials and social equity advocates about the issue and learned “how to get this done safely and efficiently, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in public revenue.”

“It’s time to move forward in Pennsylvania before we fall further behind,” he said.

“Prohibition is a failed policy with significant consequences to our Commonwealth,” the pair’s cosponsorship memo says. “It has ruined lives over minor cannabis offenses, disproportionately impacting Black and Brown communities. Consumption of unregulated and dangerous products has increased. And we are losing millions of public revenue that our communities need.”

The text of the legislation hasn’t been released yet, but the legislators said it will provide for expungements of prior cannabis convictions and community reinvestment, while promoting public health and “sustainable cannabis businesses opportunities for local and diverse operators.”

“The need to decriminalize and regulate a cannabis market is clear, but we can see from the missteps of many states before us that a poorly structured cannabis program can fail to convert the illicit market, leave consumers without health protections and enrich huge, out-of-state corporations rather than lifting up our own communities,” the lawmakers wrote in the new memo.

Ahead of last month’s election, a poll commissioned by the advocacy group Responsible PA underscored the bipartisan support among voters for marijuana legalization in Pennsylvania, including in at least two jurisdictions where races were tight between House candidates of opposite parties.

A separate poll in September found that a majority of voters in five key tossup districts supported ending prohibition.

There’s already been at least some movement suggesting another legalization push in the session ahead.

In September, bipartisan Reps. Aaron Kaufer (R) and Emily Kinkead (D) formally introduced a bipartisan marijuana legalization bill, alongside 15 other cosponsors.

And in July, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) 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.

Separately, at a Black Cannabis Week event hosted recently by the Diasporic Alliance for Cannabis Opportunities (DACO) in October, Sen. Sharif Street (D) 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.

At a press briefing in July, the chair of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus seemed to temper expectations about the potential timeline of passing legalization legislation, pointing out that the rest of the session will likely be too politically charged heading into the November election to get the job done this year.

Other lawmakers have emphasized the urgency of legalizing as soon as possible given regional dynamics, while signaling that legislators are close to aligning House and Senate proposals.

New data has also underscored the urgency of enacting cannabis reform, revealing that more than 12,000 people were arrested for cannabis possession in the Keystone state last year.

Meanwhile, a report commissioned by activists projected that Pennsylvania would see up to $2.8 billion in adult-use marijuana sales in the first year of implementing legalization, generate as much as $720 million in tax revenue and create upwards of 45,000 jobs.

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Street and Dan Laughlin (R) also participated in an X Spaces event in June where they said the votes are there to pass a marijuana legalization bill as soon as this year, though they stressed that the governor needs to work across the aisle to get the job done—and argued that it would be helpful if the federal government implemented its proposed cannabis rescheduling rule sooner rather than later.

Street was also among advocates and lawmakers who participated in a cannabis rally at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in June, where there was a significant emphasis on the need to incorporate social equity provisions as they move to advance legalization.

Laughlin, for his part, also said an event in 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.”

Warren County, Pennsylvania District Attorney Robert Greene, a registered medical cannabis patient in the state, filed a lawsuit in federal court in January seeking to overturn a ban preventing medical marijuana patients from buying and possessing firearms.

Two Pennsylvania House panels held a joint hearing to discuss marijuana legalization in April, with multiple lawmakers asking the state’s top liquor regulator about the prospect of having that agency run cannabis shops.

Also in April, members of the House Health Committee had a conversation centered on social justice and equity considerations for reform.

At a prior meeting in March, members focused on criminal justice implications of prohibition and the potential benefits of reform.

At another hearing in February, members looked at the industry perspective, with multiple stakeholders from cannabis growing, dispensing and testing businesses, as well as clinical registrants, testifying.

At the subcommittee’s previous cannabis meeting last December, members heard testimony and asked questions about various elements of marijuana oversight, including promoting social equity and business opportunities, laboratory testing and public versus private operation of a state-legal cannabis industry.

Last year, Shapiro signed a bill to allow all licensed medical marijuana grower-processors in the state to sell their cannabis products directly to patients.

Separately, Pennsylvania’s prior governor separately signed a bill into law in July 2022 that included provisions to protect banks and insurers in the state that work with licensed medical marijuana businesses.

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