Frankel’s medical marijuana oversight bill passes Pennsylvania House with bipartisan support
Rep. Dan B. Frankel March 17, 2025 | 2:15 PM
HARRISBURG, March 17 – Pennsylvania House Health Committee Chair Dan Frankel’s bill to strengthen oversight of medical marijuana testing and enhance patient safety passed the House Monday with broad bipartisan support, marking a significant step toward ensuring the integrity and reliability of medical marijuana products statewide.
House Bill 33, which aims to bolster compliance testing, product audits, statistical analyses and lab inspections, now moves to the Senate for consideration. The bill is designed to provide stronger safeguards against contamination, inaccurate labeling and deceptive practices, ensuring that medical marijuana patients have confidence in the safety and efficacy of the products they use.
“This legislation will help ensure that testing labs remain independent, transparent and accountable, so that we can prevent the types of issues that have undermined patient trust in other states,” Frankel said.
Weaknesses in consumer protections were described in a series of hearings held by the Health Committee in the previous session and have also come to light through incidences of contamination, inaccurate labeling and deceptive practices in other states.
Video of the Dec. 13, 2023, hearing on the regulatory landscape of cannabis can be found here.
The legislation directs the Pennsylvania Department of Health to oversee lab testing with greater scrutiny, require stability testing to monitor potency and purity over time and enforce strict reporting requirements to ensure patients receive consistent and reliable products.
Frankel expressed optimism about the bill’s prospects in the Senate and stressed the importance of prioritizing patient well-being in the evolving medical marijuana landscape.
“The availability of medical marijuana has brought relief and healing to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians since 2018, when dispensaries first opened their doors, and those patients deserve to know what they’re getting,” Frankel said. “This is about ensuring they have the same level of confidence in medical marijuana as they do in any other prescribed treatment.”