“I’m not against marijuana being grown at home and being used for medical purposes, and maybe even just recreational purposes,” Senate President Nick Scutari (D) told a cannabis business group on a January 12 video call. “But we’ve got to kind of let this industry get off the ground … If we flood this market with tons of additional product … I know people think it’s going to be used for personal use only, but it doesn’t happen that way.”
“The anecdotal evidence from Colorado and many other places is that there’s a proliferation of home grow that just floods the adult market, and in other markets where it’s not illegal,” he claimed. “It gets shipped into Nebraska, and other places where they don’t have a regulated market.”
Supporting the current status quo, Scutari vaguely called for “a hybrid of adult-use, home grow at some point in time, that people just can’t throw some seeds in a pot.”
His comments give an insight into the kind of thinking that hurts cannabis consumers. Home grow can mean access, autonomy and cost savings for them, and legalizing it reduces the criminalization of communities that have borne the brunt of the War on Drugs. But progress on this issue in New Jersey seems slow—even though the state is an outlier in this regard.