Diversity and Comprehensive Representation
While there is diversity on the commission, as it contains a Latinx man and woman, a white man and woman, and a Black woman, there is the missing component of a Black man, and this is noteworthy because of what Black men can bring to the cannabis conversation.
While Zeff feels that Dianna Houenou, a former ACLU attorney, is a great choice for the Black woman on the commission and the commission’s chair, he also wants the committee to “be reminded that she has been working for the Governor’s office for two years and is not ‘a State representative of a national organization or State branch of a national organization with a stated mission of studying, advocating, or adjudicating against minority historical oppression…’”
Now, the NAACP wants the commission to change their makeup in order to fit their own rules. President of the New Jersey NAACP Richard T. Smith suggests that the commission could add two more seats or take an existing member off in order to make room.