•Last week, Pennsylvania’s state House pushed adult-use legalization efforts forward, narrowly advancing a legalization bill to the state’s Senate. The bill, however, has many critics, including Senators from the left and right, and the state’s pro-legalization Governor, Josh Shapiro. An issue with the House bill is control of adult-use sales by the state’s liquor control board and sales through the Commonwealth’s state-owned liquor stores. Pro-legalization Republican Senator Dan Laughlin has repeatedly said that state store cannabis sales will never make it to Governor Shapiro’s desk, meaning significant negotiations remain before adult-use sales are legalized in the Keystone State.

•For the first two months of 2025, Colorado cannabis sales totaled $210 million, a 9% decline year-over-year. The falling sales continue a long-term slump for Colorado’s cannabis market, which peaked at $2.2 billion 2021 before sliding to $1.4 billion last year, the lowest year-end total since 2016. The contracting market has hit retailers on both the medical and adult-use fronts, with four medical and seven adult-use dispensaries closing last year. Currently there are 201 medical and 462 adult-use dispensaries in the state.

•Delaware’s legalization effort took a major step forward last week, with the FBI granting the state a system for managing a fingerprint-based framework for background checks for the cannabis industry. The FBI initially had objected to vagueness in Delaware’s adult-use regulations, which the state’s lawmakers quickly fixed. Originally, the state planned to issue the first round of licenses in April. To kick off the adult-use market, Delaware will issue 125 licenses in all, with 30 dedicated to retail, 60 to cultivation, 30 for manufacture, and five for testing labs.