Stephanie Shepard, executive director of the Last Prisoner Project, served nine years of a ten-year sentence, before returning to a community with a shifting attitude toward the substance at the heart of her conspiracy to distribute marijuana conviction.

Cannabis, she said, has grown into a massive industry, though many of the people benefitting from it “really didn’t look like me or many of the people that I was incarcerated with.”

And while she hailed lawmakers’ efforts to legalize or decriminalize recreational cannabis, she urged a panel of Democratic state House members Monday to stay focused on the people most affected by criminalization.

“Keeping the people who are actually being impacted at the center of everything we do is important to me,” Shepard said. “And I hope as lawmakers and decision makers, it’s important to you guys as well.”

Debates over the legalization of cannabis over the last few years in Harrisburg have often centered on economic opportunity for the commonwealth, how a nascent industry should be regulated, or who should profit from it.

But the lawmakers heard testimony Monday from advocates and experts like Shepard about the impacts of potential legislation on those convicted of or serving time for cannabis-related charges.

Shepard’s written testimony focused on the importance of retroactive relief — ensuring those punished for something that later becomes legal are allowed to have their convictions or sentences reassessed.

She praised a legalization bill that passed out of the state House last year that would have automatically expunged cannabis-related arrests and convictions, though the bill was rejected in the Republican-controlled Senate, in part over its proposal to sell cannabis in state-run stores like liquor.

“If we want to have a real successful legal industry, the people who blazed the trail can not be forgotten, and people can not be getting arrested for cannabis every 90 seconds in this country, still today,” Shepard said.

The meeting in Philadelphia was attended by Reps. Andre Carroll (D-Philadelphia), Ryan Bizarro (D-Erie), Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia), Greg Scott (D-Montgomery), Darisha Parker (D-Philadelphia), Tarik Khan (D-Philadelphia) and Danilo Burgos (D-Philadelphia).

Rep. Morgan Cephas (D-Philadelphiia) was also in attendance, and described her journey from skeptic to supporter of cannabis legalization.

“My colleagues know it took me a while to get here when it comes to cannabis,” she said. “What really brought me to the table was both Rep. Parker and Rep. Krajewski talking about the decriminalizing of cannabis, and what does that look like for those whose communities have been targeted, whose communities have been taken advantage of, have been overpoliced, which was something that was not a part of the original conversation when they were talking about legalization here in Pennsylvania.”

Dr. Christi Smith testified on behalf of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. She’s worked as a probation and parole officer in Philadelphia collar counties and an academic researcher on criminal justice policy.

“Ten years ago, I would not have imagined myself advocating for marijuana reform. I spent my career enforcing prohibition and supervising individuals penalized for marijuana use,” she told lawmakers. “What I have come to understand is that marijuana prohibition creates consequences that extend far beyond the initial interaction with the justice system. An arrest, even without a conviction, can limit access to employment, housing, education, and financial stability, often in perpetuity.”

With many states moving to legalize or decriminalize recreational cannabis, she called Pennsylvania’s current laws “increasingly out of step” with the national trends.

Under questioning, she described how her views on cannabis changed over time.

“When you look at the horrible outcomes from incarcerating individuals when they’re not a public safety risk, the harm and trauma that the system causes is irreparable,” Smith said. “That is my biggest regret as an adult probation parole officer, that I ever incarcerated or suggested incarceration for an individual whose violation stemmed almost exclusively from testing positively for marijuana.”

While she advocated for cannabis reform, she also said any policy should include education and prevention.

Jamie Gullen, the managing attorney of the employment unit and youth justice project at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia said nearly two-thirds of clients who come through her unit face barriers to employment because of a criminal record.

“Because we see that as such a huge need and problem every single day, we’ve been on the forefront of advocating for policies to remediate the harms of criminal records,” she told lawmakers.

Specifically, she called on lawmakers to include “broad-based, automatic, technical” solutions in any potential comprehensive cannabis reform bill, such as existing clean slate laws.

Clean Slate is a program that automatically seals summary convictions after five years, opens misdemeanor convictions to sealing after seven years and some felonies like certain drug convictions after a decade.

Since Pennsylvania instituted its effort in 2018, 13 states and Washington, D.C. have implemented similar programs. And in that time, over 1.5 million Pennsylvanians have been affected, according to Gullen.

“You can’t reach that type of scale and scope without having automated mechanisms,” she said. “We led in that area and I know we can lead again in coming up with remedial provisions for automatic marijuana expungement that can replicate some of the same successes.”

Gullen, however, suggested changes to the current policy, including shrinking the waiting period for sealing cannabis charges. However, she noted there are complications, such as how some cannabis convictions are classified as drug charges and not specifically as marijuana-related.

She also called for any cannabis legalization policy to include strong employment protections, ensuring that recreational users can’t lose, or be penalized at, jobs where their intake outside work hours doesn’t affect their performance.

As it stands, House Democrats have been broadly supportive of legalizing cannabis in Pennsylvania. Gov. Josh Shapiro has also called for legalization, including by listing it as a source of revenue in his most recent proposed budget.

However, proposals has faced hurdles in the GOP-controlled Senate. While at least one Republican senator, Sen. Dan Laughlin (R-Erie) has sponsored a bill that would make recreational cannabis legal in the commonwealth, he rejected the latest proposal to pass out of the House. And Senate leadership has been more skeptical about the push.

Every one of Pennsylvania’s neighboring states, except for West Virginia, has already legalized recreational cannabis.

Read more from our partners, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.