Many laws changed or were altered around the pandemic to ensure that civilians could still access their necessities. Since cannabis was labeled an essential business in many areas, that meant pandemic era mandates guaranteed patients could access their medication. Once such regulation in Pennsylvania is evolving from a pandemic mandate to state law.

A regulation that allows dispensaries to serve patients curbside and dispense up to three months’ worth of cannabis at once was enacted during the pandemic. However, the legislature is now headed to Governor Tom Wolf’s (D) desk to make the regulation official state law. The legislation also attempts to curb rising prices for medical marijuana.

“There’s been a lot of technical and scientific improvements during the last five years and we were able to capture them, put them together in a package and really take a deep hard dive into Act 16 and make sure that we worked out all the kinks,” Meredith Buettner, executive director of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition, said.

Previously, medical marijuana patients were only allowed to purchase up to one month’s of cannabis at a time. Although this law will be a big win for cannabis activists in Pennsylvania, the state still has a long way to go. A proposal to allow medical marijuana patients to grow marijuana for their personal use was defeated.