The Cranbury Township Committee must enact an ordinance opting out of all licenses permitted under the new cannabis law. Failure to do so would be a complete dereliction of its duties, and it would fly in the face of the overwhelming number of Cranbury residents (and voters) who have voiced their support of an ordinance at committee meetings, as well as through letters and emails to committee members.
Several members of our Township Committee, including Mayor Michael Ferrante, have represented that they are taking time to understand the scope of the new New Jersey marijuana law and to consider the long-term consequences their actions may have for Cranbury. To be sure, we want the committee to make informed decisions. But New Jersey’s ill-conceived recreational marijuana law exists within an undefined framework.
All we know is that failure to opt out of these licenses by Aug. 21 requires us to allow the cultivation, manufacture, wholesaling, distribution, and/or (and perhaps the most concerning) retail sale of recreational drugs in our town for five years. So, in truth, there’s not much for the committee to consider.
Rather, it appears to many Cranbury voters that some members of the committee prefer to proceed with a kind of willful blindness. Indeed, some committee members voted against hearing from the Municipal Alliance, an organization that researched this issue extensively. The committee also has not requested that Cranbury Police Chief Michael Owens speak on the issue, opting instead to say that they didn’t want to “put him on the spot.”