Jo Anne Zito of the ‘Coalition for Medical Marijuana – New Jersey’ believes that the new year will be a good one for the state’s medical marijuana patients, equity, and also for social justice. She cited the departure of Senate President Stephen Sweeney, replaced by Senator Nick Scutari, as a reason to be optimistic for 2022. “There is cause for hope,” Zito told Insider NJ. “Scutari is a little bit better on cannabis. He seems to definitely want to remove the felony issue, maybe make it a misdemeanor.”
Zito is a staunch advocate for New Jerseyans to be allowed to grow their own medical cannabis, something she says every state which has passed legalization allows to some degree, with the exception of New Jersey. The reason? Follow the money, as the old saying goes. “They want to track it from seed to sale as much as possible and, I think, control the price.” Zito said that without competition, cannabis prices will not come down as per normal market forces, and that in the present situation, medical marijuana remains very expensive. She was also concerned about quality control issues such an arrangement represents. “Honestly, I think that is one of the reasons why they did that, and homegrown cannabis doesn’t fit into it. Sweeney was against it and with Sweeney out, it does give me hope.”
As far as Gordon and Elizabeth’s disappointment with the product of the referendum was concerned, Zito was more sanguine. “The referendum doesn’t actually say [retail], it really just says regulating the sales and use. The way that the ballot had it titled, legalization of marijuana, well, I was reading an article that said, statistically, most people don’t even read past the title. It goes to explain that they’re legalizing a form of marijuana called ‘cannabis’ and that they’re legalizing adult use and sale, and it’s going to be regulated by the Cannabis Regulatory Commission. But at the top it says ‘legalize marijuana’, which they conveniently did not legalize. They left that as the term for illicit cannabis, which is also considered, legally, a schedule one drug. So, if it’s not from a regulated facility, then it’s not legal.”