After years of pushing from activists frustrated with New Jersey's limited medical marijuana program, lawmakers agreed Thursday to make it easier for patients to register and to purchase and consume cannabis for medicinal purposes.
The Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, which passed the Senate by a 33-4 vote, would raise the monthly limit to 3 ounces per patient and legalize the manufacture and purchase of edible forms of medical marijuana, including food and oils.
The state Senate on Thursday is expected to pass bills that would expand the New Jersey medical marijuana program and overhaul the process of expunging criminal records in the state.
The Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act would make it easier for patients to register, purchase and consume cannabis for medicinal purposes. The bill would raise the monthly limit to 3 ounces per patient, and legalize the manufacture and purchase of edible forms of medical marijuana, including food and oils.
New Jersey's Democrat-led Senate is set to vote on a bill expanding medical marijuana services.
The marijuana bill has passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly and would head to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy's desk if passed Thursday.
The Senate also scheduled a vote on legislation to make it easier for convicts to clear their records. The Assembly is considering a similar bill but has not yet voted on it.
The state Legislature failed to send bills to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk before the Memorial Day weekend that would have set up an expungement process for cannabis-related criminal offenses and dramatically expand the state’s medical marijuana program.
On a fitful day in the New Jersey Legislature, Assembly members yesterday voted to expand the state’s notoriously limited medical cannabis system. The Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act passed in a 65-to-5 vote.
The measure is expected to clear the Senate on May 30 and be signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy in early June.
New Jersey
New Jersey has danced around the matter of legalization since Gov. Phil Murphy took office in early 2018. And the state has come close.
But lawmakers canceled a March 25 vote on a legalization bill after it became clear that the Senate couldn’t muster the necessary votes. Murphy, however, remains eager to see this bill get through the legislature sometime this month—before dropping his efforts and focusing more closely on expanding the state’s medical cannabis market.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory and Expungement Modernization Act, including among its provisions expungement of past marijuana offenses to right what proponents call past social injustices, didn’t have the needed 21 votes for passage in the state Senate and was pulled from the scheduled board list of bills for the upper chamber’s Monday voting session. The Assembly followed suit and canceled its scheduled vote on the measure as well.
Days ahead of a planned vote in the Legislature that would make New Jersey the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday that the measure is short of the votes needed to pass.
The Democrat spoke Thursday during a news conference alongside more than a dozen supporters of the bill, including the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and said he and legislative leaders are "making progress, but we have a ways to go."
The following are the Democratic caucus no’s on legalization (but they’re not all hard no’s):
Senator Bob Andrzejczak (hard no)
Senator Jim Beach
Senator Fred Madden (hard no)
Senator Shirley Turner
Senator Ronald Rice (hard no)
Senator Dick Codey (hard no)
Senator Paul Sarlo
Senator Joe Lagana
Senator Brian P. Stack
There may be transactional opportunities with the ones who are not hard no’s, a second source said.
With budget hearings and discussions beginning to ramp up in Trenton, the current month might be the last best time to throw a marijuana-legalization bill over the finish line, the state Legislature’s top Democrat said Thursday.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, speaking to a select group of reporters in Trenton, said a vote needs to be held this month to hold an election on a measure legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana for adult-use.