Sweeney said the two had been packaged with the recreational marijuana bill in the hope that support for them would provide leverage to get recreational marijuana passed. But with a handful of Senators solidly opposed to creating a legal marijuana industry in New Jersey, he decided to break the measures apart.
“I thought we were going to get [legalization] done in the first 100 days of Murphy’s term,” Sweeney said. “But people have strong feelings … There are bills that are a matter of conscience where it’s really hard to push people.”
The legalization bill needed 21 votes to pass in the Senate and 41 in the Assembly. The Senate was set to vote on it on March 25, but Sweeney called it off when he realized that not enough legislators backed it. In a press conference that day, Sweeney, Gov. Phil Murphy, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin stood together and vowed to get the bill passed.
But on Wednesday, Sweeney called a press conference on his own —and blamed Murphy for the recreational pot bill failing. Sweeney said some state senators were willing to pass the recreational pot bill if it were tied to the medical expansion bill. But Murphy started talking publicly about expanding the medical marijuana program on its own, without a tie to recreational legalization.
“After the governor announced medical expansion, it was pretty much over,” he said. “The urgency went away.”