Pittsburgh City Council members on Tuesday called on Gov. Josh Shapiro and lawmakers in Harrisburg to legalize cannabis.

Councilwoman Barb Warwick, D-Greenfield, sponsored a will of council that urged Pennsylvania officials to pass adult-use cannabis legalization during this year’s legislative session.

Warwick’s statement said such a measure is a “necessary step toward justice, public health, and economic growth.”

“Not only are we seeing entire communities that have been deeply harmed by unfair marijuana laws, (people) sitting in jail for marijuana offenses, we are also missing out (on) a huge revenue opportunity,” Warwick told TribLive. “We are behind the times on this issue.”

A will of council is a position statement supporting an issue council members can’t directly influence, such as state or federal law.

When introducing his 2026-27 budget, Shapiro again called for legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

Taxing cannabis at 20%, Shapiro said, would generate about $536.5 million for the commonwealth in the first year, counting one-time licensing fees.

Warwick’s will of council pointed out that four of Pennsylvania’s neighbors — New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Maryland — have legalized marijuana for adult recreational use.

That, Warwick wrote, creates “an uneven regional landscape in which Pennsylvania residents routinely cross state lines to purchase legal cannabis.”

She pointed out also that the federal government has acknowledged cannabis’ medical uses. In December, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

Currently marijuana is classified alongside heroin and LSD as a drug “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Reclassifying it the way the White House wants would put it in the same category as Tylenol with codeine, ketamine and anabolic steroids.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determined marijuana “has a currently accepted medical use,” according to the executive order, which said more than 30,000 licensed healthcare practitioners in 43 states are authorized to recommend medical marijuana for more than 6 million registered patients.

Medical marijuana is used to treat pain, anorexia related to certain conditions and nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, the executive order said.

Pittsburgh in 2016 decriminalized possession of a small amount of marijuana.