Even though a vote to legalize weed in New Jersey is still months away, the Legislature is considering a bill to decriminalize marijuana that would make a pot bust cheaper than a traffic ticket.
The decriminalization bill, introduced by state Sens. Teresa Ruiz, Sandra Cunningham and Ronald Rice, represents a move clamored for by activists, who say the state needs to decriminalize the drug while it awaits the results of a marijuana legalization ballot question in November.
"While we await voter approval of legalization, we cannot forget about those arrested and incarcerated every day on marijuana-related charges,” said Ruiz, D-Essex, in a statement. "By decriminalizing certain marijuana offenses, we can prevent countless unnecessary arrests and the attendant legal consequences over the next seven months.”
Marijuana legalization advocates have been clamoring for decriminalization for over a year, since the push to legalize weed through the legislative process fell apart.
The Rev. Charles Boyer, director of faith-based justice reform group Salvation and Social Justice, said it was vital that decriminalization occur before marijuana is legalized.
"It's critically important that, if legalization is going to take place, that it not be done in an inequitable manner, so that we'd have a bunch of young white men becoming billionaires after we've had decades and decades of Black men and women becoming prisoners and being pushed into poverty over the same exact thing," Boyer said. "That would be the epitome of structural racism, the epitome of white privilege."