---
type: "Bill"
title: "AN ACT TO AMEND TITLES 11 AND 16 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES."
description: "This Act simplifies Delaware’s drug code with a goal of providing more fairness in its application. This Act removes geographic-based enhancements that disproportionately impact those living in urban areas as opposed to suburban and rural areas. This Act reduces the number of weight tiers from 5 to 3 with adjustments to accompanying sentences while retaining higher felony levels for weights that indicate drug dealing. This Act reflects the reality that the road to recovery from a drug addiction is difficult by removing automatic sentence enhancements based on prior drug offenses, and instead allowing discretion during sentencing to determine when a repeat offender requires substantive additional penalty."
jurisdiction: "us/states/de"
legislature: "Delaware General Assembly"
session: "150"
identifier: "SB 47"
citation: "Delaware SB 47 (150)"
classification: ["bill"]
subjects: []
status: "enacted"
primary_sponsors: ["David B. McBride", "S. Elizabeth Lockman", "Sean M. Lynn", "Sherry Dorsey Walker", "Valerie Longhurst"]
version_count: 2
action_count: 8
vote_count: 2
first_action: "2019-05-07"
last_action: "2019-09-16"
source: "openstates"
source_identifier: "ocd-bill/35a69a93-dc89-4919-b0c8-894781870aae"
source_url: "https://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail?LegislationId=47436"
source_hash: "11a71cf839645ae0f19855d1c0a333ef4b7fc827f84e1674b65807b177fd46b7"
vintage: "2026-07-01"
source_snapshot: "https://data.openstates.org/daily/2026-07-01/public.pgdump"
retrieved_at: "2026-07-06"
confidence: "reported"
tags: ["legislation", "bill", "us-de"]
---

# Delaware SB 47 (150) — AN ACT TO AMEND TITLES 11 AND 16 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES.

This Act simplifies Delaware’s drug code with a goal of providing more fairness in its application. This Act removes geographic-based enhancements that disproportionately impact those living in urban areas as opposed to suburban and rural areas. This Act reduces the number of weight tiers from 5 to 3 with adjustments to accompanying sentences while retaining higher felony levels for weights that indicate drug dealing. This Act reflects the reality that the road to recovery from a drug addiction is difficult by removing automatic sentence enhancements based on prior drug offenses, and instead allowing discretion during sentencing to determine when a repeat offender requires substantive additional penalty.

## Version chain

The bill's text revisions, in order — the diff chain from filing to enrollment.

1. **Bill Text** (committee substitute) — [source](https://legis.delaware.gov/json/BillDetail/GenerateHtmlDocument?legislationId=47436&legislationTypeId=1&docTypeId=2&legislationName=SB47)
2. **SA 1 to SB 47** (committee substitute) — [source](http://legis.delaware.gov/json/BillDetail/GeneratePdfDocument?legislationId=47508&legislationTypeId=5&docTypeId=2)

## Votes

- SM — **20–0** (pass) · upper
- SM — **28–12** (pass) · lower

## Sponsors

- David B. McBride — primary (person)
- S. Elizabeth Lockman — primary (person)
- Sean M. Lynn — primary (person)
- Sherry Dorsey Walker — primary (person)
- Valerie Longhurst — primary (person)
- Anthony Delcollo — cosponsor (person)
- Brian Pettyjohn — cosponsor (person)
- Catherine Cloutier — cosponsor (person)
- Dave G. Lawson — cosponsor (person)
- Debra Heffernan — cosponsor (person)
- Ernesto B Lopez — cosponsor (person)
- John A. Kowalko — cosponsor (person)
- Krista Griffith — cosponsor (person)
- Laura V. Sturgeon — cosponsor (person)
- Paul S. Baumbach — cosponsor (person)

## Timeline

The legislative action history — every referral, reading, and vote.

- **2019-05-07** Introduced and Assigned to Judicial Committee in Senate `introduction, referral-committee`
- **2019-05-15** Reported Out of Committee (Judicial) in Senate with 1 Favorable, 2 On Its Merits `committee-passage-favorable, committee-passage`
- **2019-05-16** Amendment SA 1 to SB 47 - Passed By Senate. Votes: 19 YES 2 ABSENT `amendment-passage`
- **2019-05-16** Passed By Senate. Votes: 20 YES 1 ABSENT `passage`
- **2019-05-30** Assigned to Judiciary Committee in House `introduction, referral-committee`
- **2019-06-05** Reported Out of Committee (Judiciary) in House with 3 Favorable, 4 On Its Merits `committee-passage-favorable, committee-passage`
- **2019-06-26** Passed By House. Votes: 28 YES 12 NO 1 ABSENT `passage`
- **2019-09-16** Signed by Governor `executive-signature`

## Source

OpenStates / OpenCivicData bulk snapshot [2026-07-01](https://data.openstates.org/daily/2026-07-01/public.pgdump); origin `ocd-bill/35a69a93-dc89-4919-b0c8-894781870aae`. Confidence: reported (aggregated from official Delaware legislature records).