[Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro](https://biography.wiki/a/Josh_Shapiro) is turning up the pressure on state lawmakers to pass marijuana legalization, arguing this week that a regulated adult-use market could generate $1.3 billion in revenue over five years and put money directly into education and public safety programs.

“While some in Harrisburg claim we can’t afford to make bigger investments in our kids, public safety, and our economy, know this: If we legalized and regulated adult-use cannabis, we’d bring in $1.3 BILLION in revenue for our Commonwealth over the first five years,” Shapiro wrote in a social media post Monday. “Those are dollars that can be invested back into our people and our communities. Stop with the excuses. Let’s get this done.”

The post lands as Shapiro’s legalization proposal sits largely untouched in the Republican-controlled Senate. The Democratic-led House passed a bill last session that would have established adult-use sales through state-owned dispensaries, but Senate Republicans rejected that model. They have not moved forward with a competing proposal of their own.

Shapiro included marijuana legalization again in his current budget request to lawmakers, making it a recurring line item that the legislature has so far declined to act on. The governor’s public messaging this week suggests he is not content to let the issue stall quietly into another budget cycle.

The revenue projections at the center of Shapiro’s argument come from his own administration, but Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office published its own analysis in February that put the numbers considerably higher. The IFO projected that a legalization framework built around a 20 percent wholesale cannabis excise tax, a 6 percent state sales tax on retail purchases, and licensing fees would produce approximately $140 million in tax revenue during the first year of implementation, covering fiscal year 2027-2028. By 2030-2031, the IFO estimated that annual figure would climb to $432 million.

Those projections are substantially larger than what the governor’s office calculated in the executive budget. The administration’s own analysis pegged first-year revenue from the 20 percent wholesale tax at around $36.9 million, rising to $223.8 million by 2030-2031. The gap between the two sets of projections reflects different assumptions about market size, regulatory rollout speed, and consumer behavior, and both estimates carry the uncertainty typical of projections for markets that do not yet exist in a given state.

For states that have watched California’s legal market generate billions in tax revenue while simultaneously battling an entrenched illicit market, Pennsylvania’s debate carries some familiar contours. The revenue argument is a standard entry point for legalization proponents, and Shapiro is leaning hard into it. The policy details, including who runs the dispensaries, how licenses get allocated, and what happens to people with prior marijuana convictions, are where these debates tend to get complicated and slow down.

The state-owned dispensary model the House passed is not common among the 24 states that have legalized adult-use cannabis. Most have opted for licensed private operators, whether under tightly controlled limited-license frameworks or broader open-market structures. Senate Republicans in Pennsylvania have not publicly embraced any specific alternative model, which makes it difficult to identify where a compromise might land.

Advocacy organizations have been trying to move the conversation forward. In February, a coalition of drug policy and civil liberties groups sent a letter urging Shapiro to personally convene legislative leaders to force a resolution this session. The letter reflects growing impatience among legalization supporters who have watched a friendly governor and a supportive House unable to push a bill through the full legislature.

Some movement is visible on the Senate side, though it stops short of full adult-use legalization. The Senate Law and Justice Committee last month amended and approved a bill that would create a Cannabis Control Board to oversee Pennsylvania’s existing medical marijuana program and the state’s intoxicating hemp product market. The legislation includes a framework that could eventually be extended to cover adult-use cannabis regulation. Whether Senate leadership would use that board structure as the foundation for a broader legalization deal, or whether it represents a narrower alternative to adult-use legislation, is not yet clear.

Public opinion is not an obstacle for legalization advocates in Pennsylvania. A Quinnipiac University poll released this year found that a majority of the state’s voters support adult-use legalization. That kind of polling has become relatively standard across the country and has not always translated into legislative action, particularly in chambers where rural districts or ideological concerns about federal law create resistance.

Pennsylvania would not be the first Mid-Atlantic state to legalize. New Jersey launched its adult-use market in 2022, Maryland followed in 2023, and New York’s market has been growing. Those bordering markets create pressure of a different kind. Pennsylvania residents crossing state lines to purchase legal cannabis in New Jersey or Maryland represent tax revenue leaving the state, an argument that tends to resonate in budget conversations even when broader legalization debates stall.

Marijuana Moment’s original reporting informed this article.

Shapiro’s social media post this week is the kind of direct public appeal that governors use when they want to move legislative opinion or at minimum put pressure on record. Whether it accelerates action in the Senate before the current session ends is the question Pennsylvania’s cannabis advocates are watching closely this spring.