One statute makes underage drinking easy to clear. Marijuana isn't the same fight.

How the remedy works

Expunging Underage Drinking and Small-Amount Marijuana Records.

Authority: 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122(a)(3)[1] [2]

Section 9122(a)(3) gives underage-drinking cases a specific expungement mechanism separate from the general summary-offense rule: a person who is 21 or older, convicted of a § 6308 violation that occurred on or after the day the person turned 18, who has satisfied any license suspension under § 6310.4, may petition the court of common pleas to have the record expunged. (Section 6308(d) itself is only a parental-notification provision and contains no expungement rule.) This is narrower and generally faster than waiting the standard five arrest-free years that applies to most other summary convictions, because it's tied to a fixed, foreseeable event — turning 21 — rather than an open-ended waiting period. The suspension condition points to 18 Pa.C.S. § 6310.4, which the legislature repealed by Act 95 of 2018, effective in April 2019. It still matters for older cases — anyone convicted of underage drinking before April 2019 may have had a 90-day, one-year, or two-year operating-privilege suspension imposed under it, and § 9122(a)(3) requires that every term of the sentence, including that suspension, be satisfied before the record can be expunged. For a § 6308 conviction entered after the repeal took effect, no § 6310.4 suspension attaches; Act 95 eliminated that penalty rather than moving it elsewhere, and a § 6308 conviction standing alone no longer carries a Pennsylvania operating-privilege suspension.

Small-amount marijuana possession under 35 P.S. § 780-113(a)(31) is a different animal. If the case ended in a dismissal, an acquittal, or successful completion of ARD, it may be expungeable through the applicable non-conviction or Rule 320 process. If it ended in an actual conviction, § 9122 generally does not authorize direct expungement. Act 36 of 2023 made drug offenses under 35 P.S. § 780-113 qualifying offenses eligible for automatic sealing after ten years conviction-free, with court-ordered restitution paid, unless a minimum sentence of 30 months or more or a maximum of 60 months or more was imposed. Eligibility turns on the sentence actually handed down, not the statutory maximum. An unconditional pardon remains the route where sealing does not apply and triggers automatic expungement under § 9122(a.1).

Local decriminalization ordinances add confusion but don't change the underlying state law calculus. Some Pennsylvania municipalities have adopted local ordinances treating small-amount marijuana possession as a civil infraction rather than a criminal charge within city limits. But state police, campus police, and many suburban and rural departments continue to charge under the state statute, § 780-113(a)(31), which carries an actual criminal record. Whether a given citation was issued under a local ordinance or state law changes what record — if any — exists to expunge.

The stakes for both categories are real for young people specifically: financial-aid eligibility questions on some applications, campus disciplinary consequences separate from the criminal case, and professional-licensing background-check disclosures (nursing, teaching, law, and other licensed fields) all ask about criminal history in ways that an unresolved record can complicate for years after the underlying conduct.