A top aide to Pennsylvania’s governor says lawmakers should stop introducing new competing marijuana legalization bills and instead focus on building consensus on the issue—but emphasized that any measure that advances needs to contain equity provisions if the governor is going to sign it into law.
During a summit organized by Ethos Cannabis and Thomas Jefferson University on Friday, Meghna Patel, deputy secretary of policy and planning in Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) office, discussed the challenges and opportunities of enacting adult-use legalization while maintaining patient access under the state’s existing medical marijuana program.
But while multiple bills have been filed in the legislature to enact legalization for adult use, none have been enacted so far. And certain legislators have indicated that a key problem is a lack of engagement from the governor, despite his calls for reform and inclusion of legalization in his budget requests.
Asked about that criticism, Patel said in response to a question from Marijuana Moment that she’s “not behind the scenes,” and so can’t speak to the status of any ongoing negotiations, but stressed that in order to advance legalization, the legislature first needs to pass a state budget that’s already about two months overdue.
“It takes the House and the Senate to come to a consensus and put forth something in front of the governor so he can sign it,” she said. “That’s how the process has been. And in order to pass something like adult-use cannabis, it’s the same exact process.”
“There have been at least a handful or more bills that have been introduced. We really need a consensus. We don’t need introduction of these bills,” Patel said. “We don’t need another set of six or seven bills. I think we need to come to a consensus, honestly, in both the House and the Senate, and get this to the governor’s desk. And that’s the key solution here, and that’s what we want to get it done.”
But the Shapiro staffer also suggested that a deal won’t happen if the bill that ultimately passes doesn’t satisfy the administration’s top priorities.
Expungements, for example, are “the center function of the governor’s cannabis policy,” she said. ‘The only way he will sign adult-use cannabis in Pennsylvania is to make sure that the expungement is possible for the people who have been convicted.”
She noted that when a cannabis conviction is on someone’s record, “the opportunities available to you become less and less… With this conviction, you can’t get housing. Sometimes you can’t get even job. It bothers you in different steps of your progress in your life.”
“When it is [illegal] in the boundary of Pennsylvania, but our neighboring states like Ohio, like New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland—when they have legalized—this becomes a Pennsylvania problem,” Patel said. “And so when we want to legalize adult-use cannabis, this is the first thing we want to address to make sure this is not only the country is a land of opportunity, but Pennsylvania is a land of opportunity.”
She also noted that the governor has called for funding to be coupled with legalization that supports people who’ve been disproportionately impacted by prohibition and want to join the legal industry.
Beyond the gridlock in the legislature, Patel said that one of the core issues in building upon reform is lingering stigma around cannabis that’s rooted in “the history of the war on drugs.”
“The conversation around legalization of adult-use cannabis and what it can and cannot do within the confines of regulation, it is all deriving from the root cause of stigma,” she said. “If we just had a magic wand, and if we remove the stigma in this space, we would talk more about it. We would talk openly about it. We would talk what policies are needed to accept this as a substance and how to make it safe. And in the absence of that, I think we’re seeing unsafe things coming up.”
Other priorities for the administration include ensuring that law enforcement is no longer allocating resources to perpetuate marijuana criminalization, maintaining a robust medical cannabis program and addressing the unregulated intoxicating hemp market.
“I think that it is very important to maintain and continue to improve our medical marijuana program. Whenever adult-use cannabis goes live, there’s a set need for patients who need a specific type of medical cannabis, which obviously is very important to helping with their conditions and the therapeutic process. So that’s very important. The equity lens for the adult use that I mentioned, that’s at the center of it, and to want to make sure that that whenever it goes live, it’s focused on that. I think the top priority, honestly, would be to make sure that all of this vision that we have comes to fruition, and it can only happen if there is a law that passes that focuses on all of that and also addressing all the different types of products that we see that are not necessarily in the cannabis category, and those are prolific.”
“The governor’s vision is a Pennsylvania that is healthier, safer and one that has that economic opportunity available for all,” she said.
Patel also pointed out that, while Pennsylvania is relatively late on adult-use cannabis, it’s had the advantage of taking lessons from other states that have implemented the reform.
“We cannot fit within the state boundaries, and think about a program that is not going to think about the future and the innovation of the program,” she said.
Friday’s summit comes amid ongoing friction and finger-pointing in the Pennsylvania legislature over the push to legalize marijuana for adult use, with a GOP senator who’s sponsoring a reform bill insisting that the House must make the first move and a Democratic representative pushing back on that suggestion.
Sen. Dan Laughlin (R), who serves as chair of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, said last month that the House “needs to pass the language in my bill and send it to my committee” after which point he “can negotiate with the Senate and the governor.”
The Democratic-controlled House, however, has already advanced a legalization proposal this session that called for a state-run sales model. That measure was quickly quashed in Laughlin’s Senate committee, however, with the GOP lawmaker and others insisting that a more traditional approach of licensing privates businesses would have a better shot.
Laughlin separately said recently that supporters are “picking up votes” to enact the reform this session.
Shapiro, for his part, said last month that he won’t “concede” on his plan to legalize adult-use cannabis through the budget.
Meanwhile, the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next governor of Pennsylvania dodged a question about her stance on legalizing marijuana—saying she doesn’t have a “policy position” on the issue and arguing that the sitting governor’s proposal for reform “way, way overstated” potential revenue.
The candidate, Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity (R), pointed to neighboring Ohio, which launched its own adult-use cannabis market this year, saying “they generated about $115 million in revenue.” And while the populations of both states are relatively comparable, Shapiro’s budget projected $536.5 million in cannabis revenue in the first fiscal year of implementation.
She did, however, say that if Pennsylvania moves forward on enacting the reform, she’ll “make sure that it’s banked appropriately.”
Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania Democratic senator recently said that federal marijuana rescheduling—which President Donald Trump said he’d be making a decision on imminently—would be “very influential” in advancing legalization in his state, giving “political cover” to GOP members on the fence about reform.
Sen. Sharif Street (D) discussed the status of cannabis legalization efforts in the Keystone State, including a bipartisan proposal to end prohibition that he filed alongside Laughlin in July.
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The legalization bill with a state-run sales model that passed the House isn’t necessarily dead for the session as a vehicle to advance reform, however. And Democrats in the chamber recently called on voters to pressure state senators to sign off on the cannabis measure, arguing that it would benefit health and safety and bring in billions of dollars in revenue for the commonwealth.
Polls have shown bipartisan support for legalization among voters, but the reform has consistently stalled in the legislature, due largely to GOP opposition. But not all Republican members are against the policy change—and one recently said she felt her party should seize the “opportunity to snatch” the issue from Democrats.
In addition to pushback from Senate Majority Leader Pittman, another Republican, Sen. Scott Martin, who chairs the influential Appropriations Committee, said earlier this month that he didn’t plan to move on any adult-use legalization bills.
Separately, just days after Laughlin and Street filed their measure, Reps. Emily Kinkead (D) and Abby Major (R)—alongside eight other cosponsors—filed legislation in the House to enact the reform. The pair have previously championed other proposals to end prohibition.
Laughlin and 16 other lawmakers also recently filed a separate bill to create a new regulatory body in the state that would begin overseeing medical cannabis while preparing to eventually handle the adult-use market as well.
Separately, a recent poll found that Pennsylvania voters say they favor a model where cannabis is sold by licensed private businesses rather than through a system of state-run stores.
Meanwhile, a Democratic lawmaker recently filed a bill that seeks to require employers to cover the costs of medical cannabis for qualifying patients receiving workers’ compensation.
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