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Pa. House Democrats share competing visions for legalizing adult-use cannabis

By Sean Kitchen

February 3, 2025

Pennsylvania House Democrats have begun circulating multiple cosponsor memos laying the groundwork for legalizing adult-use cannabis. Social equity, limits on potency and deciding who gets to sell it are still in the air. 

With Gov. Josh Shapiro poised to renew his calls to legalize adult-use cannabis for those over the age of 21 in his upcoming budget address on Tuesday, Pennsylvania House Democrats have their work cut out for them when it comes to crafting legislation that could make it through their one-seat majority

“ I’ve made clear for years now my support of legalizing adult use cannabis with restrictions and regulations and taxation,” Shapiro told reporters in Harrisburg last month.

“I’ve been very clear about what my plan is. That it has to be regulated. It has to be taxed responsibly. We have to have a criminal justice provision in there to wipe out convictions for those who possess small amounts of marijuana, and I’d like to see a good chunk of the ownership be local ownership here in Pennsylvania.”

Recreational marijuana use is legal for adults in all of Pennsylvania’s neighboring states with the exception of West Virginia, and proponents of legalization in the House see it as a way to stop losing tax revenue to those states.

“I think [legalizing adult-use cannabis] is a political inevitability at this point,” State Rep. Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia) said in an interview. 

“We are basically surrounded by states that have legalized cannabis. They are reaping the benefits of having adult-use cannabis, both in terms of protecting public safety and public health around having more ability to regulate the use of cannabis in a recreational setting. They have the opportunity to address the wrongs of past criminalization of cannabis, and they have hundreds of millions of dollars going towards their states to go towards whatever programs those states desire to fund with the proceeds from the tax revenue.”

Democrats in the Pennsylvania House started circulating differing adult-use cannabis co-sponsor memos in December and will have to iron out these differences for a bill to advance to the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate. 

Two of the main hurdles Democrats have to clear is where adult-use cannabis will be sold. Will it be sold in state owned dispensaries similar to the Wine and Spirits shops or will it be sold privately?

Krajewski, who oversaw House Health committee meetings on marijuana legalization, supports selling the substance through the state store system, describing it as a “stable entity and a stable source for retail that will not be victim to the pressures and volatility of a market.”

Not all of Krajewski’s colleagues are in agreement with the state store model. 

State Rep. Amen Brown (D-Philadelphia) is cosponsoring a bipartisan bill with State Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia) and State Sen. Dan Laughlin (R-Erie) that would allow for private dispensaries to sell cannabis across the commonwealth.

“Our model is not a state system model,” Brown said in an interview. 

Brown believes a state store system model will have impacts on the social equity side.

“I have a couple of colleagues that are saying ‘state store, state store, state store, social equity, social equity, social equity,’ but then you talk to them about it and they seem to not understand that you can’t do both.”

Brown believes that a state store model will impede on Black and Brown Pennsylvanians, and those who were disproportionately impacted by the drug war, from obtaining access to operating their own dispensaries, whereas Krajewski is in favor of diverting funds from cannabis sales to those impacted communities. 

One area that Brown and Krajewski both agree on is setting limits on potency, or the concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in cannabis, that is sold in a product and placing limits on how much product a person can buy at one time.

“I think regulation of amounts for sure. There’s this kind of nuclear arms race for who can have the highest THC levels, which is dangerous for consumers who maybe are just now trying out cannabis for the first time,” Krajewski said.

“So having some regulations around potency amounts is super important.”

 

Author

  • Sean Kitchen

    Sean Kitchen is the Keystone’s political correspondent, based in Harrisburg. Sean is originally from Philadelphia and spent five years working as a writer and researcher for Pennsylvania Spotlight.

CATEGORIES: STATE LEGISLATURE

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