The cancellation means lawmakers won’t be able to move a cleanup bill to full votes before each chamber for Friday, when Murphy must veto legalization and decriminalization bills on his desk lest they become law at noon without his signature.
For months, legislators and Gov. Phil Murphy have jockeyed on how to implement the state’s legal marijuana market after voters overwhelmingly approved legalization at the polls.
Lawmakers sent decriminalization and legalization bills to his desk on Dec. 17. Those bills have sat there, gathering dust, in the time since.
Murphy objected to provisions in those bills that appeared to remove penalties for underage use of black-market marijuana that the bills sponsors, Scutari and State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark), have said were intentional.
Multiple efforts at a cleanup bill have stalled, most recently a back-up plan to align language between the legalization and decriminalization bills. Others died after objections from Black and Brown legislators, who feared penalties in other cleanups — fines and non-criminal intervention methods — would expose youth in communities of color to unnecessary police interactions.