In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf warned that if the federal government interferes with the state’s medical cannabis program he would ask the state attorney general “to take legal action to protect [Pennsylvania] residents and state sovereignty.”
“We do not need the federal government getting in the way of Pennsylvania’s right to deliver [patients] relief through our new medical marijuana program,” the Democrat wrote in the letter dated June, 15. “Your action to undo the protections of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which prevents the use of federal funds to disrupt states’ efforts to implement ‘their own state laws that authorize the use distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana,’ is misguided.”
Sven Hosford, the spokesman for the Pennsylvania Medical Cannabis Society, applauded the governor taking action, calling him an “exemplary leader.”
“Every level of state government, in fact, has been in favor of medical cannabis,” Hosford said in a KDKA report. “There is full-throated support in the legislature.”
In March, the state’s Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, recommended legalizing cannabis for adult use in the state to “help address revenue and spending issue[s].”
Pennsylvania became the 24th state to legalize medical cannabis in April 2016 and regulators have been crafting rules and regulations to govern the program ever since. The program is expected to launch in 2018.