PMA Opposes Legislation Legalizing Recreational Marijuana

The following statement from PMA President David N. Taylor was sent to all Pennsylvania House members on May 6, 2025

As the General Assembly begins to consider proposals to legalize and mass-commercialize recreational marijuana, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association opposes these efforts.

Even as Governor Shapiro says he wants to expand the workforce so more Pennsylvanians can take up jobs in manufacturing, healthcare, and childcare, his administration and its allies are advocating for proposals that would render Pennsylvanians unemployable in those fields.

Manufacturing is the engine that drives Pennsylvania's economy, adding over $100 billion in value every year, directly employing over a half million Pennsylvanians and sustaining millions of additional Pennsylvania jobs in supply chains and distribution networks. Because manufacturing is the sector that adds the most value, the jobs in that industry have the best wages and benefits in the marketplace: these are family-sustaining jobs. Manufacturing employers are also significant local taxpayers, sustaining the quality of life in the communities where they operate by upholding the local tax base.

All licenses, permits, and insurances for manufacturers presuppose a safe working environment. Manufacturing often includes deploying heavy machinery, bladed instruments, extreme temperatures, chemical reactions, and/or high voltage, among other factors where human error could cause injury or death. Manufacturers are subject to the Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Act at the state level and the requirements of OSHA at the federal level. These legal responsibilities are not optional.

Pennsylvania is already burdened with a workforce crisis where employers cannot find enough qualified new hires to fully staff their operations at current levels of production. The inability to pass a pre-employment drug screening is one of the contributing factors to that crisis. By mass-commercializing recreational marijuana, the Commonwealth would be promoting increased drug use, thereby intensifying the workforce crisis and cutting off citizens from potentially having a family-sustaining job.

Numerous fields require pre-employment drug screening, including truck drivers, manufacturing employees, and healthcare workers. Even Wolf Home Products in York County, the family company of Gov. Tom Wolf who was once CEO, requires prospective employees to pass a drug test before being hired. For many jobs, drug use is a bright-line divide that employers cannot ignore under penalty of law.

The current situation with Pennsylvania's medical marijuana program is already a significant problem for employers because of ambiguities in the law following the Department of Health's expansion of approved use of marijuana for health conditions that already had FDA-approved treatments. Until these existing problems are addressed and corrected, there is absolutely no reason to consider any expansion of marijuana use in the commonwealth.

We urge you to reject any proposal to legalize and mass-commercialize recreational marijuana.