Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate candidates want to legalize pot, but appetite not as strong in Washington

It’s a game of num­bers for Dem­o­crats in Wash­ing­ton who want bold re­form on a num­ber of key boil­er­plate is­sues.

But even if they add one more to their ranks in the 50-50 Senate by way of Penn­syl­va­nia, it still may be un­likely that le­gal­ized mar­i­juana be­comes a re­al­ity on the fed­eral level.

All three of the top Demo­cratic con­tend­ers here — John Fetter­man, Conor Lamb and Mal­colm Ken­yatta — fa­vor some de­gree of mar­i­juana re­form, but if they pull off a win in what’s one of the coun­try’s most im­por­tant races, they’ll face an up­hill climb in the Senate.

HuffPost, check­ing in with nu­mer­ous U.S. sen­a­tors last week, re­ported that it’s not just Re­pub­li­cans who could stall move­ment on le­gal weed in the cham­ber. A num­ber of Dem­o­crats are hes­i­tant, too, ei­ther be­cause they say there are too many un­an­swered ques­tions on the con­se­quences or be­cause they say there are big­ger is­sues on their minds.

None of the three Penn­syl­va­nia Dem­o­crats would in­sist mar­i­juana is the only is­sue on their ra­dar, but it’s one that pro­po­nents say could raise bil­lions in tax rev­e­nue, re­move the re­li­ance on an of­ten-dan­ger­ous black mar­ket and re­lieve ra­cial dis­par­i­ties in en­force­ment — all while align­ing with pub­lic poll­ing.

This so hap­pens to be a race, too, in which the fron­trun­ner, Mr. Fetter­man, has made le­gal­iz­ing mar­i­juana a sta­ple of his po­lit­i­cal rise.

Asked if the pros­pect of le­gal weed is hope­less on the fed­eral level in the near fu­ture even if Dem­o­crats pick up this seat, Mr. Fetter­man, Penn­syl­va­nia’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, told the Post-Ga­zette that le­gal­iz­ing mar­i­juana is “in­ev­i­ta­ble in all 50 states.”

“As far as I’m con­cerned, le­gal­iz­ing is in­ev­i­ta­ble and the right side of his­tory,” Mr. Fetter­man said, “and it’s go­ing to get here sooner than later.”

Sooner, it may be, es­pe­cially in the states. The 2020 elec­tion saw bal­lot mea­sures to le­gal­ize rec­re­ational pot suc­ceed in New Jer­sey, Ari­zona and even con­ser­va­tive states such as Montana and South Da­kota. Eleven oth­ers have le­gal­ized rec­re­ational mar­i­juana for adult use, while 37 states — in­clud­ing Penn­syl­va­nia — al­low the use of med­i­cal mar­i­juana.

But at the fed­eral level, the Senate is where le­gal weed has gone to die. If the en­tire 50-mem­ber Demo­cratic cau­cus got be­hind it, they’d still need 10 Re­pub­li­cans to move the bill — and they don’t even have the Dem­o­crats for cer­tain.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., re­marked to HuffPost, “Mar­i­juana? I ha­ven’t even thought about mar­i­juana.” Sen. Dianne Fein­stein, D-Calif., said she gen­er­ally isn’t sup­port­ive of le­gal­iz­ing mar­i­juana but would look at a com­pro­mise bill in the Senate if it came across her desk.

The House voted ear­lier this month to de­crim­i­nal­ize mar­i­juana at the fed­eral level, ex­punge prior mar­i­juana con­vic­tions and hold resen­tenc­ing hear­ings for those who are still in the midst of their sen­tences.

The bill, called the MORE Act, also lev­ied a 5% tax on mar­i­juana and mar­i­juana prod­ucts, the pro­ceeds of which would go to­ward grant pro­grams on sub­stance abuse treat­ment, job train­ing and loans to help dis­ad­van­taged small busi­nesses get a foot in the in­dus­try.

Mr. Lamb, a con­gress­man from Mt. Leb­a­non and for­mer fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor, voted in fa­vor of the bill, say­ing at a re­cent Demo­cratic de­bate that mar­i­juana of­fenses should not be con­sid­ered as se­ri­ous a crim­i­nal threat as possession of her­oin and fen­ta­nyl or gun vi­o­lence.

But Mr. Lamb said he dif­fers from his op­po­nents in that he thinks mar­i­juana re­form should be done “slowly and very care­fully,” ques­tion­ing spe­cif­i­cally how the head of a con­struc­tion crew would han­dle one of his heavy equip­ment op­er­a­tors test­ing pos­i­tive for cann­abis, or if a school bus driver has it in their sys­tem.

To that end, Mr. Lamb filed his own amend­ment to the MORE Act, di­rect­ing fed­eral agen­cies to con­duct stud­ies into the im­pact of le­gal­iza­tion on both work­place safety and on chil­dren. His amend­ment — also re­quir­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to de­velop best prac­tices for em­ploy­ers as their mar­i­juana pol­i­cies shift — passed with bi­par­ti­san sup­port.

In a way, Mr. Lamb’s view echoes U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who re­marked to HuffPost that there’s “a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ there” if le­gal­iza­tion were to pass.

“Are we set up to keep it out of the hands of young peo­ple? What’s the law go­ing to be? Can any­body smoke it?” Mr. Tester asked.

Mr. Ken­yatta, a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Phil­a­del­phia, said that for a sen­a­tor like Mr. Tester in a red state, it should be clear that le­gal­iza­tion is pop­u­lar across party lines and could be a huge boon for farm­ers.

Say­ing that to change the Senate, it’ll take chang­ing the sen­a­tors, Mr. Ken­yatta said he, too, shares the frus­tra­tion of Amer­i­cans who see broad sup­port on a num­ber of is­sues, not no fi­nal ac­tion in Wash­ing­ton.

“We just have to elect more peo­ple who are will­ing to do what I think sci­ence, what re­al­ity and what the fu­ture re­ally dic­tates on this is­sue,” Mr. Ken­yatta said.

“We know that not only are there a num­ber of peo­ple al­ready us­ing cann­abis for med­i­cal rea­sons, we have not seen the Chicken Lit­tle pre­dic­tions of the sky fall­ing in states that have done rec­re­ational.”

Re­pub­li­can mem­bers who op­posed the House’s de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion bill said it’s not some­thing that law­mak­ers should be fo­cused on right now and warned that mar­i­juana to­day is more po­tent than it was de­cades ago. They also claim it’s a gate­way drug that could lead to us­ers try­ing other dan­ger­ous sub­stances.

Mr. Fetter­man said the only rea­son to op­pose le­gal weed is “stone-cold reefer mad­ness,” re­marking that weed is by far the least harm­ful and deadly when com­pared to al­co­hol and to­bacco, both le­gal.

Plus, mar­i­juana is al­ready here whether it’s le­gal or not, Mr. Fetter­man said, and its il­le­gal­ity is forc­ing it to the black mar­ket, where rev­e­nues are go­ing to the car­tels in­stead of to state trea­sur­ies. Legal­iz­ing weed would cre­ate a new in­dus­try and hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs across the coun­try, he said.

To sen­a­tors in his own party who may be hes­i­tant to back le­gal­iza­tion, Mr. Fetter­man said just be­cause you sup­port it doesn’t mean you’ll smoke it ev­ery­day.

“It’s the be­lief that adults should be able to par­take in it safely and le­gally with­out the fear of a crim­i­nal record for life or get­ting them­selves en­tan­gled in some type of black mar­ket,” Mr. Fetter­man said.

Stabil­ity and cau­tion

Senate Ma­jor­ity Leader Chuck Schu­mer, D-N.Y., said re­cently that he in­tends to in­tro­duce mar­i­juana re­form leg­is­la­tion in the com­ing months and has ac­knowl­edged that any ver­sion will have to get Re­pub­li­cans on board if it has any hope of pass­ing.

Mr. Lamb, mean­while, has urged fed­eral agen­cies di­rectly to un­der­take the mar­i­juana stud­ies he’s called for “with­out wait­ing for Senate pas­sage of the MORE Act,” ac­cord­ing to his of­fice. The Con­gress­man said in a re­cent de­bate that the types of swing vot­ers he ap­peals to are look­ing for sta­bil­ity and cau­tion in lead­er­ship on this is­sue.

Echo­ing ad­vo­cates who say they want justice for peo­ple con­victed of mar­i­juana-re­lated crimes, Mr. Ken­yatta said at a time when gun vi­o­lence is spik­ing across the com­mon­wealth, all avail­able re­sources should go to­ward gun traf­fick­ing — not pull­ing over peo­ple be­cause cops smell weed.

It’s not a mat­ter of “if” the gov­ern­ment will le­gal­ize weed, Mr. Ken­yatta said, but a mat­ter of “when.” He said if Dem­o­crats pick up two Senate seats this No­vem­ber, they could be in a stron­ger po­si­tion to move on this ef­fort.

Of­fi­cials for the Na­tional Or­ga­ni­za­tion for the Re­form of Mar­i­juana Laws, a lead­ing ad­vo­cacy group, have urged Senate lead­er­ship to con­sider in­cre­men­tal re­forms in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture, in­clud­ing a bill that would dis­al­low fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tors from sanc­tion­ing banks that ser­vice cann­abis com­pa­nies.

The or­ga­ni­za­tion’s po­lit­i­cal arm en­dorsed Mr. Fetter­man. Erik Alt­ieri, its ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, told the Post-Ga­zette that if Mr. Fetter­man wins the seat, it’ll send a mes­sage to es­tab­lish­ment Dem­o­crats — who seem “al­ler­gic to cam­paign­ing on this wildly pop­u­lar pol­icy po­si­tion” — that le­gal­iza­tion is both good pol­icy and good pol­i­tics.

“Mar­i­juana le­gal­iza­tion is fa­vored by around 70% of all Amer­i­cans and add­ing John to the U.S. Senate would not only give us an ex­tra sup­port­ive vote and a proud ad­vo­cate, but it would also send a mes­sage that elec­torally it is past time for pol­i­ti­cians to place them­selves on the right side of his­tory,” Mr. Alt­ieri said.