Pennsylvania Senate Votes Down Bill to Regulate Marijuana and Hemp

The Pennsylvania Senate this week rejected a bill to establish a new state agency to oversee medical marijuana and hemp, while also approving a bid to revive the measure at a later date. If the bill is eventually signed into law, it would create the Cannabis Control Board (CCB), which would be tasked with regulating intoxicating hemp products, medical marijuana, and, if legalized, recreational cannabis.

The Senate rejected the measure, SB 49, by a vote of 27-23 on Wednesday. In addition to creating the CCB, the bill from Sen. Dan Laughlin would transfer oversight of Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program from the state Department of Health to the new seven-member agency. 

Under the legislation, the new board would be responsible for cannabis licensing, testing, advertising, seed-to-sale tracking, labeling, and other aspects of the regulated industry. The measure would also recriminalize many intoxicating hemp products in line with new federal regulations set to go into effect later this year.

“This legislation is about protecting Pennsylvania families, consumers, patients and, most importantly, our children,” Laughlin said before the vote on the bill, according to a report from Marijuana Moment. “Today, intoxicating hemp products are sold throughout every corner of Pennsylvania, in every Senate district, with zero oversight. These dangerous and psychoactive products can be found in convenience stores, smoke shops, gas stations and online marketplaces with no testing standards, no labeling, or safeguards to prevent access by children.”

Laughlin maintained that creating a new agency to oversee cannabis and hemp is “necessary” because the Department of Health’s regulation of medical marijuana “has too often been marked by inconsistency and delay.”

“The department has allowed Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program to drift further and further from its original purpose,” he said, citing “lax oversight and ever-expanding interpretation of qualifying conditions.”

Measure Could Be Revived

Sen. Sharif Street, a long-time cannabis policy reform advocate who has worked with Laughlin on a separate recreational marijuana legalization bill, said “we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

“My colleague has outlined many really good things that are addressed in this bill. Are there other things that are not sure? Are there other things that we could be doing in the space of cannabis? Absolutely,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that today this legislation isn’t worthy of a positive vote… Should we pass it today, it would go to the House and there will be opportunity for additional work to be done in the legislation.”

Not long after the Senate voted to reject the bill, the chamber approved a subsequent motion to reconsider the proposal by a vote of 29-21. It is not clear when the Senate will reconsider the measure, however.