Local officials in Pennsylvania’s second most populous city are calling on state lawmakers and the governor to urgently agree on a plan to legalize marijuana this year.
The Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday adopted a resolution noting that despite legalization being enacted in surrounding states and the Trump administration’s “historic” move to federally reschedule marijuana, “Pennsylvania continues to treat cannabis possession as a criminal offense in many circumstances, resulting in ongoing arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration that disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income residents.”
Pennsylvania “is now surrounded by four of its five neighboring states—New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Maryland—that have legalized adult-use recreational cannabis, creating an uneven regional landscape in which Pennsylvania residents routinely cross state lines to purchase legal cannabis,” the resolution says. “This regional disparity has caused Pennsylvania to fall significantly behind other states, resulting in the loss of substantial tax revenue, job creation, and economic opportunities as consumer spending flows out of the Commonwealth each day.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) this month again included marijuana legalization in his budget request to lawmakers, as he has done for the past several sessions. But while the House of Representatives last year passed a bill to legalize cannabis
Read full article on Marijuana Moment
