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As Pennsylvania Democrats step up the push to legalize marijuana, the state\u2019s top Republican senator says he doesn\u2019t think the state will enact the policy change this year\u2014and he believes that it should not move ahead at all without further changes at the federal level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see it coming before this session ends,\u201d Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R) said when asked about the prospects of cannabis legalization at a press conference on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople tend to forget that recreational marijuana, for better or worse, is a scheduled narcotic at the federal level,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think we would all be well served to have some more national direction on how to deal with this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pittman criticized leaders of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives for passing a bill last year that would have legalized marijuana and put sales in state-controlled dispensaries<\/a>, saying it displays a \u201clack of seriousness on this issue\u201d on the part of the other chamber\u2019s majority party.<\/p>\n \u201cThey sent us a recreational marijuana legalization proposal that would have marijuana in the state stores. Now, come on,\u201d the top GOP senator said. \u201cI mean, we\u2019re not going to put weed in state stores, number one, because they can\u2019t functionally do it because they couldn\u2019t comply with federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n Pittman also said he doubts the state\u2019s ability to manage a recreational marijuana program, pointing to a recent report from the Pennsylvania auditor general that was critical of the current medical cannabis system.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department of Health has not exactly done a bang-up job on medical marijuana, so I don\u2019t have a whole ton of confidence in our ability, even if we were to legalize recreational marijuana, to do it well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania are continuing to call for broader marijuana legalization.<\/p>\n The speaker of the Democratic-controlled House said last week that\u00a0the state could legalize recreational marijuana next year<\/a>\u00a0if her party wins a handful of seats in the November elections and takes a Senate majority.<\/p>\n A Democratic senator recently filed a\u00a0discharge resolution seeking to bring a bipartisan cannabis bill out of committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n A Republican senator said she will soon file legislation to keep hemp THC products legal in the state while adding age limits<\/a> as well as new requirements for registration, testing and labeling.<\/p>\n A separate bill that has already been introduced in the Pennsylvania Senate would create a\u00a0new Cannabis Control Board (CCB) to oversee the state\u2019s medical marijuana program and significantly restrict most hemp THC products<\/a>. That legislation was defeated on the Senate floor in June, though it is pending reconsideration.<\/p>\n Separately, a Pennsylvania Senate committee approved a bill this week to allow terminally ill patients to use medical cannabis in hospitals<\/a> and other healthcare facilities, while the full House passed similar legislation earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 The legislative maneuvering around cannabis comes as a recent poll shows that Pennsylvania voters overwhelmingly support marijuana legalization<\/a>\u2014and that the largest share put the blame on Republican lawmakers for the fact that the state has not yet enacted the reform.<\/p>\n Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has repeatedly called on lawmakers to send him a marijuana legalization bill and for the last several years has included the reform in his budget requests to the legislature.<\/p>\n Republican gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity, who is running against Shapiro, recently\u00a0pledged to veto a marijuana legalization bill<\/a>\u00a0if lawmakers ever sent one to her desk\u2014though she added that she doesn\u2019t think the reform stands a chance of making it that far in the state.<\/p>\n Her running mate for lieutenant governor, Jason Richey, claimed that\u00a0legalizing marijuana would be \u201ccatastrophic\u201d for the state<\/a>, arguing it would increase the size of the illegal market, undermine job creation and harm public health.<\/p>\n The governor earlier this year, as he has in past years,\u00a0included cannabis legalization and the resulting expected revenue in his budget request<\/a>.<\/p>\n The state\u2019s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) reported in February that\u00a0legalizing cannabis in Pennsylvania would generate nearly half a billion dollars in annual revenue<\/a>\u00a0by 2028, an estimate that is a significantly larger cash windfall compared to projections from Shapiro\u2019s own office.<\/p>\n A spokesperson in the governor\u2019s office said the Trump administration\u2019s federal marijuana rescheduling move is an\u00a0\u201cimportant step\u201d that \u201cadds support\u201d to his push to legalize cannabis<\/a>. A senator also said that federal reform will make it easier to legalize marijuana in the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Top Pennsylvania GOP Senator Says State Needs \u2018National Direction\u2019 Before It Can Legalize Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
As Pennsylvania Democrats step up the push to legalize marijuana, the state\u2019s top Republican senator says he doesn\u2019t think the state will enact the policy change this year\u2014and he believes that it should not move ahead at all without further changes at the federal level. \u201cI don\u2019t see it comingContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":87052,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87053,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87051\/revisions\/87053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Top Pennsylvania GOP Senator Says State Needs \u2018National Direction\u2019 Before It Can Legalize Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"