Pennsylvania’s 2025-2026 Budget Includes Call to Legalize Adult Recreational Marijuana Use to Boost State Revenue

Legalizing marijuana for adults in Pennsylvania – controlled, taxed and administered by the government – could become a cash cow for the commonwealth.

While medical marijuana is legal in Pennsylvania and generates about $6 billion in program sales as of May 1, 2024, recreational adult-use marijuana continues to be outlawed.

Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton (HD-191, Delaware and Philadelphia Counties) said Pennsylvania is surrounded by states which have already legalized marijuana for both medical and recreational adult use. They include Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Ohio.

From tax cuts for seniors to a strategy for increasing Pennsylvania’s coffers, McClinton addressed 113 attendees on a Zoom call Tuesday to share cost generating – and savings – initiatives for the upcoming 2025-2026 legislative year.

READ: As Pennsylvania Inches Toward Legalizing Recreational Cannabis, Lawmakers Propose Selling It in State-owned Dispensaries Similar to State Liquor Stores

The event was hosted by Philadelphia-based Represent PA, a non-profit advocacy organization of pro-choice progressive women throughout the commonwealth.

Represent PA hosts monthly virtual Breakfast Briefings, which address resonant issues of interest and concern to women, families and Pennsylvanians. Today’s briefing touched on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s upcoming budget.

“Gov. Shapiro’s 2025-2026 budget [offers] proposals to pay for things” including an increase “to a reasonable minimum wage,” McClinton explained. The current minimum wage rate in Pennsylvania is $7.25 per hour.  “Pennsylvania is embarrassingly low – with Ohio and West Virginia’s minimum wage at $10 per hour,” she said.

“Many don’t know our state budget gets 40% of its funding from Washington,” McClinton added.

According to McClinton, strategies to increase revenue for the 2025-2026 legislative year include:

• A tax on skill games. These video gaming machines are similar in look and operation to slot machines. Pennsylvania’s courts have found “skill games fall outside the state’s Gaming Act,” according to City & State Pennsylvania.com. Skill games are located in small businesses like gas stations, convenience stores – known as “bodegas” – and other private sector locations. “There is no regulation and no taxes” on them, McClinton said.

• Legalize adult-use marijuana. “Most House Democrats support this, though we will need Republican support for passing a bill this massive,” she said.

“This could be a new economic opportunity – from farmers to [dispensaries] and those who put together edibles,” McClinton explained.

READ: Pennsylvania House Passes 4 Bills to Protect ‘Obama Care’ for Pennsylvanians. Here’s How Your Bucks County Lawmakers Voted

According to the House Appropriations Committee website Shapiro’s 2024-2025 budget called for a 6.2% increase over the previous year with a spending package value of $47.598 billion.

“It’s going to be a heavy lift … will the Senate work with us,” McClinton said of the more than 420 Bills circulating in the legislature.

McClinton added that the recent House passage of four bills – with bipartisan support – included protections for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is now in the hands of the GOP-controlled state Senate.