A new legislative push in Pennsylvania seeks to legalize recreational cannabis in the commonwealth.
Reps. Rick Krajewski and Dan Frankel are circulating a memo to gather cosponsors for the bill intended for the 2025-2026 legislative session, reported Marijuana Moment.
The Democratic duo was behind a series of cannabis reform hearings over the past year. The memo calls for fellow legislators to join the legalization push.
"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 lawmakers said, adding Pennsylvanians are using recreational cannabis, "being legal or not….. whether by visiting our bordering states, buying unregulated hemp loophole products at gas stations and vape shops, or purchasing in the illicit market."
Besides the rationale for legalizing cannabis statewide the memo outlines key provisions of the measure the duo of lawmakers plans to introduce next year.
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Frankel emphasized the need to address the harms caused by cannabis prohibition.
"We have a moral obligation to not only legalize but also to work to repair the damage caused by decades of marijuana arrests," he said. "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."
Krajewski, chair of the Health Subcommittee on Health Care, called prohibition "a reckless and racist policy which deliberately targeted and destroyed Black and Brown communities.
"As a criminal justice organizer and chair of the Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission, I'm fighting to ensure that we reinvest revenue generated from the cannabis industry into areas most impacted by the War on Drugs and ensure that those who are still dealing with criminal sentences and records are able to finally move on," Krajewski said.
An earlier analysis by FTI Consulting suggests Pennsylvania's potential recreational marijuana market holds huge economic potential. Results showed that Keystone State could earn up to $2.8 billion in sales and create nearly 45,000 jobs during the first year of operations.
The FTI study, backed by Responsible PA and aimed at resolving the political conundrum around marijuana legalization, builds upon data gathered for PA's medical marijuana market, which yielded $1.2 billion in 2023 alone.
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