Lawmakers are set to take the first serious step toward legalizing recreational marijuana in Pennsylvania.

A hearing scheduled Monday in the Senate Law and Justice Committee will be the first time a legislative committee in the General Assembly has vetted this issue, although legislation to legalize or decriminalize marijuana has been around for years.

Committee Chairman Mike Regan, R-Cumberland/York counties, has invited representatives from law enforcement and the criminal justice arena to speak at this first in a series of hearings.

“We have some expert panelists that will be testifying, and I am looking forward to the hearing,” Regan said. “It’s not going to be all one-sided. It’s going to be based on their broad experience in law enforcement on the federal, state and local levels.”

The committee expects to hold at least two more hearings to hear from regulators and operators from some of the 18 states that have legalized recreational cannabis, as well as advocacy groups on either side of the issue, said Regan’s chief of staff Bruce McLanahan.

Regan, a former U.S. marshal, along with Philadelphia Democratic Rep. Amen Brown are in the process of drafting legislation to end the prohibition on recreational marijuana. The hearings are intended to help identify the best practices to incorporate into their bill.

“Some places like Michigan and others have legalized and then had to go back and fix things that were initially in the bill,” Regan said. “I want to get it right the first time, so we’re really taking our time to make sure we have a really good solid product because it won’t be taken seriously if it’s not a good product.”

“We are beyond past due for legalizing marijuana here in Pennsylvania,” said Brown.

Both Brown and Regan said their companion bills will include details about regulating and taxing the sale of cannabis, how the tax revenue will be used, along with other related issues including decriminalization and expungement.

“With legalization comes righting wrongs and expunging records for those with nonviolent drug offenses,” Brown said. “It also means that we work with law enforcement to ensure that we are not in conflict or on opposite sides as we work toward legalization. We can and should work together, and in fact, it’s safer for both the police and the community when we work in tandem.”

Gov. Tom Wolf is in favor of legalizing adult-use marijuana and hopes the hearings will move the issue forward in a positive way, said the governor’s spokeswoman Beth Rementer.

In the meantime, she said the governor “is committed to continuing with an expedited review of pardons for nonviolent marijuana-related offenses until the Legislature commits to giving Pennsylvanians what they want and giving this commonwealth the economic benefits we know will result from legalization.”

Signs of progress

Over the past decade or more, Democratic lawmakers have led the charge in Pennsylvania to advance marijuana legalization. It wasn’t until this year that two Republican senators agreed its time has come.

Fellow Republican Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie County, this year teamed up with Sen. Sharif Street, D-Philadelphia, to announce their bipartisan-backed adult use marijuana legalization bill, which sits in Regan’s committee awaiting action.

That’s among the signs that has Regan believing the opposition to marijuana legalization is softening.

When he was serving in the House of Representatives and medical marijuana legislation was first proposed, he said, “the no’s were more visceral than the no’s are for this. And I think part of that is because of medical marijuana. People have seen there’s 600,000 users out there and the world hasn’t imploded. I think that’s important.”

Beyond that, he said more of his Republican colleagues are privately coming around to the idea, although he declined to provide names. Plus, some prosecutors are now publicly saying legalizing it could reduce violent crimes.

Warren County District Attorney Robert Greene has instructed police officers in his county the only marijuana-related DUIs he’ll prosecute are ones where the driver shows “outward signs of impairment.”

Regan admits convincing statewide organizations representing law enforcement to alter their position on marijuana legalization will be a tough sell, but the former law enforcement officer himself is hoping to barter with them when they come to asking for his support on other issues.

“I think we can make progress there,” Regan said. “I’d like to get them to neutral.”

Along with that, there’s the issue of what’s happening around Pennsylvania.

“It’s an important issue, especially as New Jersey’s legalization will probably roll out in the next month or two as well as will New York’s,” said Jeff Reidy, executive director of Lehigh Valley NORML, a marijuana legalization activist group. “We’ll soon be surrounded in Pennsylvania by legal states and Pennsylvania is going to have to either admit they are willing to let all of those potential tax dollars go to another state, because people will cross borders to get to a legal marketplace.”

Projections of what taxing marijuana could generate for Pennsylvania vary from former state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale’s 2018 estimate of $580 million annually if taxed at 35%, upward to the Independent Fiscal Office’s projection last year of as much as $1 billion in new tax revenue.

Those estimates are not out of the ballpark of what other states have collected. Illinois brought in more than $400 million from recreational marijuana sales in 2021 and Michigan, $250 million, according to a report from The Badger Project, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

But as more states enter the marketplace, Pennsylvania should consider allowing cannabis-infused products such as brownies, gummies and other edibles - which New Jersey’s law doesn’t allow - to set it apart from the competition, said Steen Schain, a Philadelphia-based cannabis attorney.

Further, he would like to see the state mandate statewide delivery of adult-use cannabis while permitting individual communities to opt out from allowing dispensaries to open up within their borders.

“Statewide delivery of cannabis is essential,” Schain said. “Sixty percent of Americans prefer home delivery of cannabis over shopping at dispensaries in their communities. Pennsylvania’s adult use program should mandate statewide delivery regardless of whether towns opt out.”

Is it the time?

House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre County, remains unsold on the need to legalize a drug while the state continues to struggle with an opioid epidemic. Other opponents want to give the medical marijuana program more time to develop before expanding to recreational use.

As for the idea that Pennsylvania should move to full legalization because other states are doing it, opponents aren’t buying it.

“Pennsylvanians should understand the time tested lesson of the question: If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?” said Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and a former senior drug policy adviser to the Obama administration.

Sabet, regarded as one of the nation’s leading marijuana legalization opponents, called Regan’s position on the issue out of step with public health and his law enforcement colleagues across the state and predicts “it is going nowhere fast this year.”

Dan Bartkowiak, communications director for the conservative-leaning Pennsylvania Family Institute, said as Regan admits, law enforcement officials nationally as well as in Pennsylvania are “adamantly opposed to full legalization - and for good reason.”

He added: “If we value public safety, if we value protecting children and families in Pennsylvania, any pursuit to commercialize the sale of what science proves to be a harmful and addictive drug should absolutely be opposed.”

But polls show an overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians and Americans favor legalization.?A Pew Research Center survey conducted in spring 2021 found fewer than one in 10 (8%) shared the view of Sabet and Bartkowiak’s organizations.

Closer to home, an October 2021 survey from Franklin & Marshall College found that 60 percent of Pennsylvania voters back adult-use legalization. That’s the highest level of support for the issue since the firm started polling people about it in 2006.

Regan thinks that could be a difference maker in building support in the legislature.

“People are starting to realize the polling on this,” Regan said. “It’s 60-plus percent across the state. I think some people who think they maybe would receive negative feedback from their constituents are now maybe thinking they won’t.”