If you asked me five years ago if Pennsylvania’s state legislature would pass medical cannabis legislation with overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats, and that the legislation would be signed by a Pennsylvania Governor, I would have said, “No way…will never happen…”

Well, it happened.

Medical cannabis legislation and cannabis decriminalization legislation is nothing new in Pennsylvania. Bills dealing with both subjects have been introduced, and citizen activists had been lobbying for support of those bills for the past 30 years. With the thousands of bills that get introduced each legislative session, the bills never saw any legislative movement other than being introduced, and each year they would die a silent death at the end of each legislative session.

Pennsylvania has a full-time state legislature that operates on two-year long legislative session cycles. In the 2013-14 Pennsylvania legislative session, many were surprised to see that medical cannabis legislation was introduced by a Senate Republican, Mike Folmer, from rural Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Republicans have held a vast majority in both the Pennsylvania House and Senate for several years (Senate Republicans currently hold a 31-19 majority; House Republicans 119-84) , and it was Democrat members that had introduced cannabis legislation in the past. This shift was remarkable as it was uncharacteristic of Folmer, a conservative member of the Republican dominated Senate,  to introduce and publicly support something “far left” like medical cannabis.  In speaking personally with Folmer, he told me many times of all the “guff” he had to take from his fellow Republican members upon his introduction of the legislation.

Public hearings were being held, and Folmer had then revealed how he had been inspired by constituents who came to visit him with critically ill children who wanted, and needed, medical cannabis therapy. Folmer did a commendable job of convincing his fellow Republican members of the benefits of medical cannabis and on September 14, 2014 the Senate passed Folmer’s medical cannabis bill, 43-7.

This caught my attention. If the conservative, Republican-controlled Senate could pass this legislation, this is something that might actually have a chance to be viable. But Folmer’s victory was a short-lived one. The Republican Governor at the time, Tom Corbett, the state’s former Attorney General, was 100% opposed to approving any type of medical cannabis legislation so the bill died in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives at the close of the legislative session.

In November of 2014, Republican Governor Corbett was the first Pennsylvania Governor to ever lose re-election to a second term. The new Governor would be Tom Wolf, a Democrat, who had openly said during his campaign that he not only ideologically supported medical cannabis, but would sign any legislation that would land on his desk.

This really caught my attention. It appeared to me that this could be an issue that could pick up steam in the new legislative session, and actually have the ability to make it to the finish line.

The 2015-16 legislative session was now in full swing and Senator Folmer had reintroduced his medical cannabis legislation, this time called Senate Bill 3 (SB 3). The legislation gained a lot of attention, and advocates were regularly in the Capitol building.

As I stated, the legislative process is a deliberative one. It is particularly slow if the issue is controversial or creates something historically new in nature. With that said, SB 3, despite the perception of some parties, moved at light-speed. The Senate passed the bill in May of 2015 (40-7), the House of Representatives passed the bill in March of 2016 (149-43) and the bill was concurred on by both chambers and sent to Governor’s desk in April of the same year.

One of the reasons it moved so fast was there simply wasn’t any real opposition. The issue was something the majority of the general population of Pennsylvania wanted or didn’t have a strong opinion on. This was also an issue that transcended political partisanship because of all the stories that were relayed by all of the parents and patient advocates. Health has no political affiliation and members could relate as illness has touched every person at one time or another. It also helped that the PA Senate, through Senator Mike Folmer, gave the issue a tremendous amount of momentum that was matched by the Governor’s office.

Governor Tom Wolf signed SB 3 into law making it Act 16 of 2016 on April 17, 2016.

In Act 16 there are 17 qualifying conditions including HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s, MS, spinal or neurological indication of spasticity, inflammatory bowel, neuropathies, Huntington’s disease, Crohn’s disease,PTSD, intractable seizures, glaucoma, and  “severe chronic or intractable pain of neuropathic origin or severe chronic or intractable pain in which conventional therapeutic intervention and opiate therapy is contraindicated or ineffective”. The Act is also the first to include autism and sickle-cell anemia as conditions.

The current forms allowed in Act 16 are oil, tincture, pill, topicals (gels, creams, ointments), and “a form medically appropriate for administration by vaporization or nebulization”. No edibles are to be sold. No home growing is permitted. No smoking or vaporizing of plant product is currently allowed, but there is a provision in Act 16 that could allow the Department of Health to approve vaporizing of the plant product. There will be no THC-cap on any of the products.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health will be the administrator of the program under at least three state-wide regions. The Department will develop regulations, issue licenses, regulate prices, inspect facilities, and prepare reports every 2 years about changes needed to the program.

Licenses will be awarded to 25 grower/processors and 50 dispensaries. Each dispensary could open up a facility in each region, allowing a potential for 150 dispensaries. Five special licenses out of the 25 will be given to grower/processors so they can operate dispensaries.

The cost of a license for growers/processors is a  $10K application fee, $200K registration fee, and the ability to show $2M in capital ($500K which must be in deposit at bank). The $200K will be returned if a license not granted. For dispensaries there is a $5K application fee and a $30K registration fee (also returnable if license not granted).

The Department of Health has announced that it will be promulgating temporary regulations in a “roll out” fashion, as opposed to putting all the regulations out for approval at once. Insofar as industry goes, the grower/processor temporary regulations will be introduced first which should give potential applicants a good idea of what the application process and the merit-based license awarding process should look at. The next round of temporary regulations will be dispensaries, followed by regulations for patients and doctors, followed by the rest of the regulations needed to fully implement the program.

The grower/processor temporary regulations were introduced for public comment on August 18th, and the hope is that all the other regulations will be out by the end of 2016. The momentum is strong to deliver clear and commonsense regulations in a timely fashion.

As the weeks and months unfold, I will be providing an ongoing update on the regulatory and licensing process in Pennsylvania as well as an explanation of how politics and business have contributed to these outcomes.