Aug 29, 2020 3 min read

The effects of COVID-19 are going to be felt even after a vaccine or successful treatment arrives, particularly when it comes to state and local budgets.

Because those budgets have to be balanced and tax revenue has evaporated in the economic downturn, most experts are forecasting at least a couple of years of austerity lie ahead, with layoffs and program cuts in the cards.

While it won’t cure all of what will almost certainly ail the state, Gov. Tom Wolf has dusted off a proposal to legalize marijuana in Pennsylvania, arguing that the revenue that would come from having marijuana available for recreational use could be used to boost existing efforts to help small businesses. Given the beating small businesses have taken as a result of coronavirus restrictions, they could use it. According to the governor, a slice of the revenue will also be used for restorative justice programs for communities that have been hit hard over the years as a result of marijuana arrests and convictions.

A while back, veteran Pennsylvania political analysts G. Terry Madonna and Michael Young lamented that the commonwealth tends to hesitate when it comes to adopting sensible and innovative proposals that have gained a foothold elsewhere and, as an added bonus, also have majority support. They explained that, in those moments, “Pennsylvania punts, waiting as long as possible before being dragged fighting and screaming into modern times.”

History will probably repeat itself in the months ahead. But could the coronavirus have a way of focusing the minds of lawmakers and bring them around on legalization? We can only hope.

Pennsylvania has already successfully made medical marijuana legally available. In fact, marijuana is still illegal across the board in only three states – Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota. In states like California, Colorado and Washington, where marijuana is available for recreational use, it’s a billion-dollar business. Not that long ago, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale forecast that if marijuana is made available legally in the commonwealth, it would generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 million for the state’s coffers.

A poll by Franklin & Marshall College in March 2019 found that 59% of Pennsylvanians back legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Though support for legalizing marijuana in this region lags behind other parts of Pennsylvania, when Lt. Gov. John Fetterman visited Washington early in 2019 to hear what residents thought about making marijuana legal, many said they supported it.

That legalizing marijuana is even a part of mainstream policy discussion is an indication of how times and attitudes have changed. At the midpoint of the last century, it was widely believed that marijuana use would lead to insanity and violence, and possessing it could put you behind bars for up to a decade. It would have taken quite a leap for the denizens of Harrisburg to imagine 50 or 60 years ago that marijuana could be used not merely to get stoned, but help stem a tide of red ink.