While New Jersey lurches toward legalizing recreational marijuana, one Newark lawmaker is leading the conversation against it.
State Sen. Ron Rice (D-Essex), who on Monday hosted a town hall in Hillside, believes the current legalization bill would lead to more foreclosures in Newark, drive up health care costs and do little to address the racial disparities in the criminal justice system for past - and future - marijuana convictions.
California lawmakers just passed a bill that would direct the state Department of Justice to automatically clear the records of hundreds of thousands of low-level cannabis offenders. AB 1793, proposed by Assemblymember Rob Bonta, would require DoJ officials to identify all eligible cannabis-related convictions between 1975 and 2016 and notify the relevant prosecutor by July 1st of next year. The individual prosecutors then have one year to decide whether they want to challenge any of these cases, or allow them to be expunged or reduced.
The state attorney general's office will soon announce that it will not seek to extend a statewide adjournment of marijuana possession cases in municipal court when an order expires on Sept. 4th, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
Instead, the attorney general's office will issue guidance to New Jersey's local, municipal and county prosecutors informing them that while marijuana possession remains illegal, they may exercise discretion and decide not to prosecute some simple possession cases.
Wall Street Investment bank RBC Capital Markets has estimated that a legal cannabis market in the entire U.S. could generate $47 billion annually within the next ten years, according to a Business Insider report. The same analyst claimed that current combined legal and illegal sales top $50 billion.
“We believe further US decriminalization of cannabis including for recreational use is very likely over time. It ultimately starts with US voters who across demographics are supportive of cannabis legalization.” — RBC Capital Markets, in a letter to clients
Stephen Sweeney, New Jersey Senate President and co-sponsor of an ambitious bill to expand medical cannabis access and legalize marijuana for adult use, told reporters that he expects the state Senate to hold a vote on legalizing cannabis as early as September. But exactly what lawmakers will be voting on is still unclear. The current proposal, a combined medical and adult-use bill, still needs revision and debate in committee before it can come to a vote.
In response to Grewal’s memo, Prosecutor McCoy said Tuesday she postponed the prosecution of a case in Madison last week. “All the court is doing is doing is accepting ‘not guilty’ pleas.
“My perspective is any possession cases that come into court will be adjourned until Sept. 4,” she said. “We’ll put off any penalties until Sept. 4.” But once that date arrives, she noted, “The penalties won’t be different. Nothing has changed; simple possession will come back to court sometime after Sept. 4.”
That does not mean visitors to Jersey Shore towns should feel free to spark up this summer. Police say it’s business as usual at this point, which means those caught with marijuana will face charges.
“It’s not going to have no impact on the Ocean City Police Department,” said Detective Sgt. Steph Sullivan.
Like other shore towns, Ocean City sees a summer spike in marijuana arrests along with the large influx of tourists in July and August, but according to Sullivan, the summer of 2018 hasn’t been noticeably different than other years.
For a panel of lawmakers and advocates at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, it wasn't a matter of if a marijuana market boom was coming to New Jersey. It was just a matter of when.
For Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, it was pivotal that people in his community, who he said have been victimized by drug laws, get to profit from that industry. He was part of an eight-member panel yesterday that discussed marijuana policies to dozens of residents at the church along West Kinney Street.
Every city in America knows that it’s a bad idea to prosecute low-level, nonviolent marijuana offenses. It wastes scarce municipal resources and does nothing to enhance public safety. What’s more, even though whites and blacks use marijuana at similar rates, blacks are more harshly punished for it.
That’s why, on July 19, marijuana offenses were effectively decriminalized in Jersey City, New Jersey’s second most populous city.
On the same day New Jersey's attorney general announced an immediate adjournment of marijuana-related cases in municipal courts, people in the state's second-largest city appeared to welcome the news.
In Jersey City's Journal Square neighborhood Tuesday, a number of passersby shared their thoughts on the future of marijuana in the state just hours after New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal advised all local and county prosecutors to put a hold on marijuana-related offenses until Sept. 4.