As we say out West, all hat and no cattle.
At the start of the year, legalization of recreational marijuana in New Jersey and New York appeared all but inevitable.
The Democratic governors of both states supported legalization and the legislatures in both states were controlled by Democrats (in New Jersey 56-26 Ds in the Assembly and 25-15 in the Senate; in New York 106-43 in the Assembly and 39-23 in the Senate). National and statewide polling in both states showed overwhelming support for legalization, especially among Democrats.
But over the space of a few weeks both legalization efforts were on life support.
So what happened?
In New Jersey (which holds its state elections in odd-numbered years), Governor Phil Murphy had made legalization part of his 2017 campaign. But then he spent all of 2018 and the first weeks of 2019 dickering with the leadership of the New Jersey Legislature over the details of a legalization bill. Especially over the tax rates in it.
When they finally reached an agreement last February and introduced a bill, Murphy and the Democratic leadership evidently assumed that the bill they had drafted would swiftly pass. Bad guess. Murphy and Senate President Stephen Sweeney discovered that they didn’t have the votes to get their bill through the State Senate and on March 25, pulled it from the Senate agenda hours before it was scheduled for consideration.
Chances are Murphy and Sweeney hadn’t bothered to involve most other members of the legislature in the negotiations. So when the bill was finally introduced not many legislators felt they had any ownership of the measure. And it’s likely some resented being left out of the Murphy-Sweeney negotiations.
Although it’s technically not dead, multiple sources say the New Jersey bill isn’t going to get further consideration this year.