Pennsylvania Bill Gives Bipartisan Support to Patients Growing Medical Cannabis

Two Pennsylvania MPs – one Democrat, the other a Republican – joined forces this week to support a bill that would allow medical cannabis patients in the state to grow their own cannabis plants at home.

State Sens. Sharif Street, a Democrat, and Dan Laughlin, a Republican, said Wednesday that they will introduce laws “in the near future” that will allow patients to “use a limited number of cannabis plants from their homes for personal use.” to cultivate “.

The two lawmakers said the program has “offered life-saving drugs to communities across the Commonwealth” since the state’s Medical Marijuana Act was passed in 2016.

“However, there are still known inefficiencies around MMJ, particularly in terms of cost and access,” wrote Street and Laughlin in a memo distributed to other lawmakers to encourage more support for the bill. “This year’s quarterly meeting of the Pennsylvania MMJ Advisory Board revealed significant differences in accessibility. The PA Health Department noted that in some counties, patients may have to travel more than two hours to reach a pharmacy. This is simply not feasible for many Pennsylvanians. In addition, patients spoke out loudly about the tax challenges related to rising drug costs and affordability. “

In a statement announcing his support for the law on Wednesday, Laughlin’s office cited the Marijuana Policy Project as saying that “15 of the 19 states that have legalized adult cannabis and about half of the states for medicinal cannabis allow personal cultivation ”.

“In states that have adequate safeguards – like limiting the number of plants per household and requiring plants to be safe and not publicly visible – growing cannabis at home simply wasn’t a problem,” the Laughlin statement said. “No state has stopped home growing, and there have never been any serious efforts to do so.”

Laughlin, who said earlier this year that he is considering a gubernatorial run in 2022, said it “is critical that politics hit people where they are and by allowing medical marijuana patients to have cannabis plants at home We can help reduce costs and reduce accessibility problems for this important drug. “

“This legislation would go a long way in helping everyday Pennsylvanians meet their health needs and ensure everyone is treated equally and fairly under the state’s medical marijuana law,” said Laughlin.[thestate’smedicalmarijuanalaw”Laughlinsaid[thestate’smedicalmarijuanalaw”Laughlinsaid

Marijuana advocacy is nothing new to Street, which represents parts of Philadelphia. (His Twitter bio contains a call to legalize cannabis.)

Last month, he and Laughlin tabled a bill, SB 473, to legalize adult recreational pots.

When announcing the bill, Street called legalization “an issue whose time has come” and described the ban as “an expensive public order failure that criminalizes patients and personal freedoms, and has harmed generations in a failed drug war that has threatened the public Taxpayers continue to be burdened with growing costs to our criminal justice system. ”

“This bill is both morally and tax-wise, and prioritizes the people of Pennsylvania,” Street said in a statement at the time.

“After nearly a year of working with Senator Street, advocacy groups and voters, we launched SB 473 which we believe is the best option to legalize recreational marijuana in Pennsylvania,” Laughlin said in his own statement last month. “With bipartisan support, Senator Street and I believe we have found a way to get this important piece of legislation where it is going. With most of the surrounding states enacting legalization laws, it is time to act now, before we lose revenue to border bleeding. While the increase in sales could bring in about a billion dollars annually, what matters most to me is that the industry creates the thousands of family-support jobs we so desperately need. “