For well over a year, New Jersey’s Democratic leaders have been trying to legalize and expand the use of cannabis in the state. Now that adult-use is all but certain to be on the 2020 ballot, and medical marijuana expansion is headed to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk, experts are contemplating what comes next.
At an NJ Spotlight roundtable held last Friday in Somerset, two panels of experts discussed the next steps for medical marijuana expansion and why the effort for adult-use legalization failed so spectacularly. The discussion was moderated by NJ Spotlight Editor in Chief Lee Keough.
“I was sitting in the front row of that bus heading toward the legalization of marijuana for everyone 21 and over,” Fruqan Mouzon, former general counsel to the New Jersey State Senate Majority and chair of the cannabis practice group at McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP said of his time working on the (adult-use) recreational bill. After four years of work, however, he said he found himself “sitting on this bus with no seatbelt when it crashed and burned half a mile from the finish line.”
When that measure went up in flames, lawmakers quickly pivoted to expanding medical use as a backdoor to full legalization.