Unfortunately, Bill S10 has fallen victim to the acrimony between Gov. Phil Murphy and state Sen. Steve Sweeney, both of whom are Democrats. Will the governor and senate majority leader play nice for once and pass it into law? Their track record suggests not.
Despite Gov. Murphy’s and Sen. Sweeney’s shared leadership with the state party in power, they’ve accomplished very little in the post-Christie era, thanks in large part to their personal clashes. Sen. Sweeney insists on tethering medical cannabis reform to the larger, more complicated adult-use legalization debate.
State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, a moderate Republican from Monmouth County, co-sponsored Bill S10 to improve New Jersey’s long-languishing medical cannabis program. “Whether we like it or not, [Bill S10] is tied to the recreational debate, for what’s likely strategic reasons,” says O’Scanlon.
“We worked hard to disabuse everyone of that [recreational] affiliation, to see medical marijuana as the medicinal product that it is. Now by tying these two things together, we sort of backtrack on that message and I’m not happy about it,” he adds.