Peter Barsoom lives in Denver, but he really wants to come home to New Jersey.
The son of Egyptian immigrants, Barsoom grew up in Jersey City and East Brunswick and earned his master’s degree in political science at Princeton University. For two decades, he was a successful Wall Street executive. But five years ago, he decided to roll the dice: He quit his day job at Intercontinental Exchange and dove headfirst into the nascent cannabis industry in Colorado.
Collaborating with botanists, chocolatiers and cannabis experts, Barsoom used his friends as guinea pigs and came up with a line of chocolate-and-cannabis edibles. He named his company 1906 Edibles, a reference to the year Congress passed the Wiley Act, which effectively began marijuana prohibition.
Today, he claims, 1906 Edibles is the fastest-growing edibles brand in Colorado. His products are in more than 200 Colorado recreational- and medical-marijuana dispensaries. Now he’s hoping to open a growing facility and dispensary of his own—in New Jersey.
Barsoom joins a long line of entrepreneurs, from near and far, champing at the bit to cash in on legal weed in New Jersey, thanks to a campaign promise of Governor Phil Murphy. But a bill that would legalize adult-use marijuana in New Jersey was pulled from consideration on March 25, when Murphy failed to garner enough support to guarantee Senate passage. At deadline, legislative leaders were regrouping and planning to reintroduce the bill later this year.
Conventional wisdom remains that it is only a matter of time before recreational marijuana becomes legal in the Garden State.