The coming year is expected to be a pivotal test of Pennsylvania's political will to legalize recreational marijuana, something that nearly every bordering state has done over the last decade. Despite broad bipartisan agreement about the need to catch up with its neighbors, past attempts to create a legal market that drives tax revenue and centers restorative justice have stalled in the state legislature.
The cannabis industry has an optimistic view that Pennsylvania will turn the corner in 2025.
MORE: Pa. marijuana legalization bill seeking to use state stores faces cloudy future
"From our perspective, we think that going into 2025 is the best look we've ever had at an adult-use cannabis market in Pennsylvania," said Brittany Crampsie, spokesperson for the marijuana lobbying group Responsible PA. "We got close last year. There was a bipartisan bill introduced. There was bipartisan support in both chambers – which is pretty unique, especially given that we're in a divided legislature."
Pennsylvania's path to legalizing recreational cannabis is similar to the state's "long process" leading up to the legalization of medical marijuana in 2016, Crampsie said. That year, former Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signed the Medical Marijuana Act into law, making Pennsylvania the 24th state in the country to permit the sale of marijuana as a medicine. The state's medical market opened up two years later and was refined and expanded in 2021.
Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), who now represents Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate, spent most of their second term ramping up support to legalize recreational marijuana.
In 2019, Fetterman conducted a statewide listening tour in all 67 counties to hear Pennsylvania residents' views about marijuana legalization. In the middle of that year, Fetterman reported that around 70% of people who attended his sessions were supportive of legalization. Support for decriminalization was nearly unanimous.
Some of the top concerns about marijuana were whether it would be a gateway to more harmful drugs and whether legalization would increase intoxicated driving. People in support of legalization talked about the disproportionate effects of criminalization on people of color and the opportunity for Pennsylvania to use marijuana tax revenue to address other problems in the state.
In response to the listening tour, Wolf came out in support of marijuana legalization in an address at the state capitol, urging lawmakers to take action.
"I said in the past that I didn't know if Pennsylvania was ready for this," Wolf said in 2019. "I believe Pennsylvania is ready for this."
Legalization bills stall in General Assembly
Public campaigning by Wolf and Fetterman prompted a series of marijuana legalization bills to be introduced by Pennsylvania lawmakers.
Former state Sen. Daylin Leach (D) and state Sen. Sharif Street (D) proposed SB350 in late 2019 to legalize cannabis for people 21 and older. Their bill called for establishing a permitting process for growers, processors and dispensaries, in addition to developing guidelines for home growing. Another major feature of their bill was the expungement of criminal records for past and pending marijuana offenses, as well as promoting pathways for minority-owned small businesses to enter the cannabis industry.
The two lawmakers cited estimates of more than $500 million per year in state tax revenue, using figures from a 2017 analysis by former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. Tax projections generally have ranged on a scale of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, Crampsie said.
Former state Rep. Jake Wheatley (D) also introduced HB50 in 2019 using a similar framework as SB350.
Both of those bills stalled in committee in the Senate and House, a pattern that followed with other marijuana bills in subsequent sessions.
Wolf remained steadfast in his support for legalization in the final years of his second term. The issue became one of the central planks of his legislative agenda in 2020, when Wolf called marijuana an invaluable source of revenue to help recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Wolf also warned that Pennsylvania was on course to lose the cannabis industry to neighboring states that had built more momentum toward legalization.
“The decriminalization and legalization of adult-use cannabis are what the people of Pennsylvania want," Wolf said at a Harrisburg news conference in September 2020.
By February of that year, Street and state Sen. Dan Laughlin (R) introduced the state's first bipartisan marijuana legalization bill. Like the others before it, the proposal failed to advance in the legislature.
New Jersey legalized marijuana in February 2021, followed by New York the next month and Virginia in July.
Although activity on the issue waned in Pennsylvania as Wolf's time in office came to an end, marijuana advocates were optimistic about the groundwork he and Fetterman had laid.
"Wolf and Fetterman did a lot, and they tried," said Chris Goldstein, regional organizer for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Maybe they didn't accomplish that much, but they were out there trying every day."
Shapiro calls for legalization, but efforts in Harrisburg remain stuck
During his campaign for governor in 2022, Josh Shapiro (D) was a vocal supporter of marijuana legalization and decriminalization. In each of his first two budget addresses as governor, he called on state lawmakers to send him a bill regulating adult-use cannabis and expunging the records of people with past offenses.
"Our failure to legalize and regulate this only fuels the black market and drains much needed resources for law enforcement," Shapiro said in his first budget address in 2022. "It’s time to catch up."
Over the course of the next two years, state lawmakers failed to put forth a consensus bill on marijuana legalization. Maryland legalized cannabis in 2022, followed by Delaware and Ohio the next year. West Virginia is now the only remaining border state without legal adult-use cannabis.
In 2023, a proposal from state Rep. David Delloso (D) called for using Pennsylvania's Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores to sell adult-use cannabis. The bill picked up 20 co-sponsors – mostly Democrats – but failed to advance.
In his 2024 budget address, Shapiro again lamented that other states were outpacing Pennsylvania. He called for a legalization bill that would impose a 20% tax on recreational marijuana and said he hoped to sign a law by July, allowing adult-use sales to begin in January 2025.
At the time of Shapiro's address, a poll from Franklin & Marshall found two-thirds of Pennsylvania residents in favor of marijuana legalization.
But Senate Republicans showed little initiative to take up Shapiro's calls for action this year.
“We have a wide range of opinions on adult-use marijuana,” Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R) said in February. “Frankly, my personal opinion is that this is something the federal government needs to address in a uniform manner, but we also need to understand where the governor’s coming from whenever he indicates a desire to make that a priority.”
Over the summer, another bipartisan bill was introduced by state Rep. Emily Kincaid (D) and former state Rep. Aaron Kaufer (R), who did not seek reelection in November. Their bill had called for a private industry model paired with criminal justice reforms, but it never got out of committee.
Most recently, state Reps. Rick Krajewski (D) and Dan Frankel (D).said they plan to introduce another bill based on a state store model that would expand the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to regulate marijuana. The bill also would allow for gradual licensing of private businesses to enter the industry. Krajewski chaired a series of meetings with cannabis industry leaders and law enforcement officials in 2024.
Street and Laughlin also are expected to introduce an updated legalization bill in the Senate this year. Street has a podcast that examines various aspects of marijuana legalization through interviews with experts.
Shapiro has said his 2025 budget will again call for marijuana legalization.
“I think it is an issue of fairness, justice and competitiveness,” Shapiro said in December. “All the states around us have approved or are in the process of approving recreational marijuana. Folks are going across state borders in order to purchase it and paying taxes to those states. They should be keeping their money right here in Pennsylvania.”
Will 2025 be a breakthrough year?
Crampsie said the cannabis industry is confident that there is enough support in the legislature to get a bill to Shapiro's desk, and she expects multiple proposals to emerge in 2025 that will bring more lawmakers into the debate.
"To some degree, I think you're seeing generational change in the legislature," she said. "As the caucuses and their leadership get younger and slightly more progressive, or move more to the middle, I think there's an increased comfort level with adult-use cannabis."
The divided legislature in Harrisburg could prove to be an obstacle. The 2023-2024 session produced among the fewest enacted laws in Pennsylvania in recent decades, suggesting that complex bills will face an uphill battle if they aren't prioritized.
But Pennsylvania doesn't need to be trailblazers since 24 other states have legalized adult-use cannabis. There are blueprints for product safety regulation and other industry standards that would help the state rein in the black market for marijuana, synthetic THC and other hemp-related products sold without rigorous rules for potency and marketing.
"We have a lot of models to work from, a lot of lessons from what worked well in other states and really what didn't work well," Crampsie said. "I think that moves the conversation forward. Pennsylvania is probably the largest, closest state to doing this right now."
Goldstein said Shapiro and other state leaders have failed to build on the momentum created by Wolf and Fetterman. He said Shapiro should have taken a stronger position on marijuana decriminalization to put an end to arrests for possession of small amounts statewide. State rep. Danilo Burgos (D) plans to soon introduce a standalone decriminalization bill, a path that some states have followed before legalization.
"I don't know what the hang-up is on a statewide decriminalization bill," Goldstein said. "For all the talk that Shapiro wants to give, his power is in clemency and there's nothing happening in that regard. It just seems like the lowest fruits on the tree are for (Lt. Gov. Austin Davis) and Shapiro to follow up on the programs of Wolf and Fetterman."
Goldstein said Pennsylvania also is missing the leadership of people who championed marijuana reform in years past. He pointed to former Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (D), who wrote the bill to decriminalize marijuana in the city while still a member of City Council in 2014. Goldstein called Kenney's successor, Mayor Cherelle Parker, "a skeptic" on marijuana legalization. He said she's shown virtually no interest in supporting the cause and publicly fought against having a medical marijuana dispensary in her district as a member of City Council in 2017.
"One of the things that used to drive legalization was Philadelphia being a leader on this," Goldstein said.
Although Goldstein is doubtful about Pennsylvania's chances of legalization in 2025, he said it's going to come down to whether enough leaders from both parties commit to putting the issue in the foreground in Harrisburg.
"You never know what can happen. There are so many people who are invested in this on both sides of the aisle and there are some really reasonable voices," Goldstein said. "If you had a couple of smart Republicans get together with a couple of smart Democrats, it could get done pretty fast. But I think there's so much political animosity – who gets the win and who doesn't – that it could be a problem."