However, the bill is in need of some major changes, according to South Orange Village President Sheena Collum and Maplewood Township Committee member Dean Dafis.
Authorized to speak on behalf of the entire Maplewood Township Committee, Dafis was one of about 70 individuals who presented testimony to the joint committee in Trenton on Monday.
Noting that Maplewood had already adapted zoning ordinances to permit treatment centers for medical marijuana (as has South Orange), Dafis said that the TC also had “formally expressed our support for cannabis legalization to the Legislature and Governor Murphy. We did all this because we wholeheartedly recognized that legalization and medical expansion would advance racial justice, begin addressing the civil rights crisis of mass incarceration of people of color after the decades-long abusive, prejudicial and ineffective ‘war on drugs’, and help mediate a growing opioid crisis in our community.”