Exclusive documents obtained by Bloomberg under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act show that the state cannabis regulatory commission issued citations to seven companies from January 2020 through mid-April 2022, when marijuana sales broadened from medical to recreational. There were a total of 54 alleged violations.
Excerpt from public documents on New Jersey cannabis citations.
Still, the companies with violations — including publicly traded Verano Holdings Corp., Curaleaf Holdings Inc. and Ascend Wellness Holdings Inc. — won approval to open recreational-weed shops. It was a rocky start: On opening day, April 21, the sellers were among the five companies that started drawing a collective $360,000 in fines involving sales hours.
Toni-Anne Blake, a spokeswoman for New Jersey’s cannabis commission, which made and oversees the rules, said all transgressions in the documents have been corrected. “Our goal for issuing a violation is to correct the action that led to a violation,” she wrote in an email.
None of the reports suggested criminal activity.