Legal Weed in NJ: Are We Ready?

Murphy’s pledge to legalize marijuana in New Jersey could be quickly fulfilled.

Photo courtesy of Michael Fischer from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/shallow-focus-photography-of-cannabis-plant-606506/

Legalizing marijuana in New Jersey has overnight moved to the front burner with the election of Phil Murphy as the state’s 56th governor. The Democrat will have a long list of campaign promises vying for his attention when he takes office on January 16; legal weed in New Jersey may be the first promise to be fulfilled.

A bill by Senator Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) has already been drafted. If approved and signed into law, the bill would make New Jersey the ninth state to legalize cannabis for recreational use. Murphy has made his position quite clear: “I’m all in,” he proclaimed repeatedly on the campaign trail.

Scutari predicts his bill to legalize marijuana in New Jersey will be signed into law within Murphy’s first 100 days, or by the Legislature’s summer recess at the latest. He concedes it will take some political elbow grease to secure the needed votes, particularly in the Senate. “I have science and the right ideas on my side,” says Scutari. He also has Senate President Stephen Sweeney on his side. (Following the recent elections, the Democrats hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate, effective in January; Scutari says he already has two Republican votes.)

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), sponsor of a bill in the lower house that duplicates the Senate version, thinks legal marijuana in New Jersey is inevitable, likening it the gay marriage movement that swept the nation in recent years. He may be right; support for legal weed in New Jersey is at an all-time high. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 59 percent of New Jerseyans support legal marijuana, according to a Quinnipiac University survey.

If and when we have legal marijuana in New Jersey, state government would create a projected $1 billion-plus industry with great growth potential. Taxing that revenue would produce about $300 million a year for the state coffers, according to New Jersey Policy Perspective, based on a study indicating that nearly 366,000 people in New Jersey over the age of 21 illegally consume about 2.5 million ounces a year.

READ MORE: Here’s Where You Can Legally Smoke Marijuana.

During the campaign, Murphy consistently downplayed the tax revenue argument, insisting repeatedly it’s the “last reason” he supports legal marijuana in New Jersey. But in a brief moment of candor at a Maplewood town hall meeting during the campaign he did concede, “God knows we can use every penny we can find. “ Then, Murphy moved immediately back on script, stressing the social and moral reasons for legalization, and going right to his applause line with a liberal audience: “The gap between white and non-white incarcerated persons in New Jersey is the widest gap in the United States.”

A 2016 report by the Sentencing Project supports Murphy: In 2014, African-Americans made up about 13 percent of the state population, but 60 percent of the incarcerated population. Further, New Jersey has the nation’s 10th worst disparity among Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites in prison.

“Low-end drug crimes is the biggest contributor to that disparity,” Murphy said during a campaign debate, “so that’s the reason why we want to legalize marijuana, not because we can make money off it.”

An ACLU analysis of marijuana arrests in New Jersey further supports Murphy’s argument. African-Americans are three times more likely to be arrested for possession than whites, even though usage rates are similar.

About 25,000 people were arrested in New Jersey for marijuana possession in 2015, according to Dianna Houenou, policy counsel for ACLU-NJ, and “there are a host of collateral consequences that come with just one arrest,” she says. They include jail time and fines, loss of employment, loss of student loans, loss of housing and even loss of custody of children.

“Nothing has done more damage to this country than our archaic drug laws, particularly pertaining to marijuana,” Scutari says.

It’s hard to argue against the social justice case—and even the most ardent legalization opponents don’t try. Instead, they suggest that the problem can be solved by decriminalization. During the gubernatorial campaign, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, the Republican candidate who lost to Murphy, said she supports the decriminalization of marijuana, which would solve the problem short of outright legalization.

Jeanette Hoffman, a New Jersey GOP consultant, echoes Guadagno’s stance. “If the true issue for politicians is social injustice—and not raising revenue for the state budget—then a much more common sense approach would be to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana,” Hoffman says. “You can accomplish the goal of keeping people out of prison for low-level pot offenses without encouraging widespread marijuana use and the negative consequences that come with legalization.”

A decriminalization bill did pass in the Assembly in 2012, but the Senate refused to follow suit.

Bill Caruso, a lawyer and longtime Democratic insider, has been advocating legalization for 10 years, and was involved in writing the medical marijuana bill. He says the decriminalization argument doesn’t fly.

“You don’t get the revenue, you don’t get the research and development [jobs] and even the fees are problematic,” he says. More importantly, he stresses, “We need to change the culture. There’s a stigma attached to cannabis… even with medical marijuana.” He adds that legalization is a matter of racial and social justice.

Scutari says decriminalization is a “big mistake” that would “create an open-air drug markets.” The goal, Scutari says, “is to get rid of the drug dealers.”

Both Caruso and Houenou take it a step further, calling for expungement of prior marijuana possession convictions.

“Legalization is one step forward in righting these wrongs,” Houenou asserts, “but it must come with concrete measures to repair those harms to communities of color.”

Scutari and Gusciora support expungement, but believe that for political reasons, it will have to come later in separate legislation. “We have to walk first,” Scutari says.

At least one Democratic legislator is not convinced. State Senator Ronald Rice (D-Essex), chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, says he would want public hearings to explore the pitfalls of recreational marijuana. “We know there are negative factors that we will need to safeguard against, from children’s access to marijuana-infused edibles, to motor vehicle accidents caused by impaired driving, to the effect of marijuana on babies and the impact of legalization on communities of color,” Rice said in a prepared statement.

Outgoing Governor Chris Christie has been the state’s most strident opponent of marijuana legalization, claiming that Democrats are willing to “poison our kids” to receive “blood money” from the taxes pot sales will bring in.

“We are in the midst of the public health crisis on opiates,” Christie said during a speech at a forum on substance abuse hosted by the New Jersey Hospital Association in Princeton. “But people are saying pot’s okay. This is nothing more than crazy liberals who want to say everything’s okay. Baloney!” Christie has doubled down on that position in his role as chairman of President Trump’s opioid commission.

Christie’s gateway argument is supported by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Columbia University.

Their research, published this year, suggests that marijuana users may be more likely than nonusers to misuse prescription opioids.

But scientific opinion is mixed on the issue.

While opioid fatalities are rising across the country, marijuana legalization in Colorado led to a “reversal” of overdose deaths in that state, according to research published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study found that in the two years after Colorado implemented its recreational marijuana law, opioid deaths fell by 6.5 percent.

Another study in 2014 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found a 25-percent decrease in prescription drug overdoses in states with medical marijuana laws that allow chronic pain patients to participate.

New Jersey legalized marijuana for medical applications in 2010. There are about 10,000 registered patients, but the pace and reach of the program has been roundly criticized by patients and their advocates who blame Christie for dragging out the program’s implementation. They say New Jersey is among the most rigid and restrictive of the 29 states with medical marijuana programs.

New Jersey’s permits only those afflicted with one of a dozen conditions to obtain cannabis. Among the approved conditions are terminal cancer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease and muscular spasticity. The initial report from the state’s Medicinal Marijuana Review Panel, issued in July, calls for 43 more conditions to be added to the program, including chronic pain.

The Colorado opioid study also warns that while legal marijuana may reduce opioid deaths it could also be increasing motor vehicle fatalities. That and other studies prompted AAA to oppose legalization.

“Some of this is still challenging,” Murphy concedes. “Driving cars and things like that.”

Many people don’t realize marijuana impairs driving skills, says Cathleen Lewis, AAA Northeast director of public affairs. What’s more, unlike alcohol, there currently is no way to accurately test for marijuana on the spot. That makes it difficult to enforce laws on impaired driving.

Lewis proposes that, should cannabis be legalized in New Jersey, the Legislature should dedicate funds from marijuana tax revenue toward a comprehensive education campaign. Further, she says, money should be earmarked to develop testing, as well as training for law enforcement officers to detect marijuana impairment.

“It’s not a real issue,” Scutari argues. Smoking and driving is illegal now and will remain illegal. “We’ll track it and remain vigilant,” he says, adding that he supports funding to train officers in drug recognition.

There are other demands on the tax revenue. The ACLU, for example, wants to see funds dedicated for social programs in the minority communities that have been adversely affected by current marijuana laws.

Again, Gusciora agrees that these proposals have merit, but will also have to wait for further legislation. You can accomplish only so much out of the gate, he says, adding, “We also need to fix our pension system and settle our debts.”

Legal Pot in NJ: Here’s What’s in the Bill

Scutari’s bill would:

• Decriminalize marijuana possession of up to 50 grams.

• Establish a Division of Marijuana Enforcement in the state Attorney General’s Office. The office would create the rules used to govern the legal market of growers and sellers.

• Allow people 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of dried marijuana, 16 ounces of edible products infused with cannabis, 72 ounces in liquid form and seven grams of marijuana concentrate.

• Continue to prohibit marijuana use in public places.

• Impose a sales tax on recreational sales of legal weed in New Jersey beginning at 7 percent in the first year, climbing to 10 percent in the second year, and jumping 5 percent more each year until it reaches 25 percent. Taxes on medical marijuana would be abolished.

• Allow individual towns to decide if they will allow pot sales. Towns that don’t participate won’t be entitled to share in tax revenue generated by sales of legal pot.

• Give the six existing medical marijuana dispensaries nonprofit first shot at selling recreational cannabis.

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  1. JohnB

    Cannabis prohibition is based on lies.

    That’s not an opinion; it is a readily verifiable, historically documented FACT.

    Thus, there are only two possibilities for people who support cannabis prohibition:

    1. They are somehow still unaware that their government has been lying about cannabis for more than 80 years now.

    2. They approve of their government lying about cannabis for more than 80 years now.

    That’s it. That’s all there is. It’s not a fuzzy issue at all. Nothing about it is unclear. You either want the government to continue lying to you, or you want it to stop lying to you.

  2. Brian Kelly

    Marijuana consumers deserve and demand equal rights and protections under our laws that are currently afforded to the drinkers of far more dangerous and deadly, yet perfectly legal, widely accepted, endlessly advertised and even glorified as an All American pastime, alcohol.

    Plain and simple!

    Legalize Marijuana Nationwide!

    It’s time for us, the majority of The People to take back control of our national marijuana policy. By voting OUT of office any and all politicians who very publicly and vocally admit to having an anti-marijuana, prohibitionist agenda! Time to vote’em all OUT of office. Period. Plain and simple.

    Politicians who continue to demonize Marijuana, Corrupt Law Enforcement Officials who prefer to ruin peoples lives over Marijuana possession rather than solve real crimes who fund their departments toys and salaries with monies acquired through Marijuana home raids, seizures and forfeitures, and so-called “Addiction Specialists” who make their income off of the judicial misfortunes of our citizens who choose marijuana, – Your actions go against The Will of The People and Your Days In Office Are Numbered! Find new careers before you don’t have one.

    The People have spoken! Get on-board with Marijuana Legalization Nationwide, or be left behind and find new careers. Your choice.

    Legalize Nationwide!

  3. DrMichaelMilburn

    I agree with Brian Kelly–adult use cannabis should be legalized. Cannabis-impaired driving is often used as an argument against legalization–no one should drive impaired, but actual impairment should be measured. When cannabis-impaired driving is criminalized, the level of impairment should be the same as the level of impairment for alcohol. There should be no per se laws for blood THC levels–the NHTSA says they have no basis in science.

    I have developed a new public health app that measures actual impairment–it is called DRUID (an acronym for “DRiving Under the Influence of Drugs”) available now in the Apple App Store and in Google Play for the Android. DRUID measures reaction time, decision making, hand-eye coordination, time estimation and balance, and then statistically integrates hundreds of data points into an overall impairment score. DRUID takes just 2 minutes.

    Our website is http://www.druidapp.com

    DRUID allows cannabis users (or others who drink alcohol, use prescription drugs, etc.) to self-assess their own level of impairment and (hopefully) decide against driving if they are impaired. Prior to DRUID, there was no way for an individual to accurately assess their own level of impairment. DRUID also demonstrates that it is feasible to measure impairment reliably by the roadside, not just exposure to a drug. It could also be a way for cannabis users who have developed tolerance to show they are unimpaired.

    DRUID was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered: http://www.npr.org/2017/01/25/511595978/can-sobriety-tests-weed-out-drivers-whove-smoked-too-much-weed

    Also on television: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/02/28/science-lags-behind-marijuana-impairment-testing/

    After obtaining my Ph.D. at Harvard, I have been a professor of psychology at UMass/Boston for the past 40 years, specializing in research methods, measurement and statistics.

    Michael Milburn, Professor
    Department of Psychology
    UMass/Boston

  4. Aajaxx

    Governor Christies attitude and foot-dragging implementation of medical marijuana was borderline criminal.

  5. Jeff King

    Marijuana is safer than alcohol so why are we driving people to drink?

  6. RB

    Legalize a vice to increase the tax coffers. That’s it in a nutshell. The rest is just rationalization. Representing it as a way to reduce “prison Inequality” presents it as “social justice”. No one can or should argue with that! Disgraceful. This is our state leadership??? Society does not need greater opportunities to mess itself up. It’s doing quite well as it is. States that go this route will regret the day. The long-term social costs will more than outweigh the Democrat’s pay back to the unions for their support. Check the rates in Washington and Colorado of DUI since legalization of pot. Not exactly a marketing point for the “enlightened” proponents. Cheapen society for the almighty tax dollar. Disgraceful.

  7. Chris Borrelli

    Christy linking opiates to cannabis was his downfall, his reluctance to at the very least decriminalize it was guadano’s downfall.

  8. Nikki0906

    Sessions was probably an extra in “Reefer Madness” 😝 How many people have died of a “Marijuana Od?” 0 Drinking and driving, or deaths pertaining to Alcohol? Way too many! Other states that have legalized recreational pot see a decrease in opioid related deaths and have raised plenty on $ for programs,education, and other positive things. Also, it would save people’s lives from being ruined for a being criminally charged and having a record. C’mon NJ we are the “Garden Sate” after all! #legalizeit

  9. joeski

    Can’t wait… the edibles are they way to go.. smoking is still unhealthy no matter what one inhales… but cannibis infused chocolate chip cookies would befantastic!! Eat

  10. Rocco Burdi

    Murphy Scaturi and Sweeney have the brains of an idiot. I have been on this earth for ninety years and know leagalizing pot is is not the answer to people being arrested. Yes I do believe in medical pot.
    Giving our youth the license to pollute thier brain is a stupid and dangerous venture. Please reconsider!