The concerns were first raised just before the Jersey City Planning Board approved the application of Cannabis Place 420 Corp to operate an adult-use cannabis dispensary at 1544 Kennedy Boulevard, in close proximity to three public schools, including one just two blocks away, despite the concerns of parents and school officials.
Officials on the planning board argued that their ruling applies to requirements set up by zoning regulations the city council established last year.
At the Tuesday meeting of the board of directors for the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, members will consider a proposal for a cannabis dispensary at 2415 Pacific Ave.
The site is currently home to a vacant retail building, set between Delilah’s Den and a corner liquor store a block off the Boardwalk.
The application is for a “Class 5 micro dispensary for the sale of recreational cannabis” and requires a variance. The CRDA functions as the planning board for Atlantic City within the tourism district.
The company applying for the variance is Sonraj LLC.
Jersey City’s planning board recently announced a special meeting to be held on March 28 to discuss a dozen cannabis dispensaries scattered throughout different neighborhoods.
Perhaps the most significant would be located at 284 First Street, an address that could house the city’s first consumption lounge. Per our exclusive reporting from last week, a Freehold-based company called The Perennial Group is looking to bring an endeavor called Cream Dispensary and Lounge to the current Hard Grove Café space. The company has already launched a website and hopes to open by late 2022.
When “Cheeba Spot” opens in the summer of 2022, ( Essex County Area) it will be one of the 1st African-American owned cannabis dispensaries in the State of New Jersey; Cheeba Spot will be the first of its kind, providing a safe and appealing shopping experience in an urban pop culture environment that focuses on quality products, customer education, and quality service.
After New Jersey’s groundbreaking 2021 approval to allow legal recreational use and sales of marijuana, Cheeba Spot is eager to enter the space of retail recreational cannabis.
I’m a child of the ‘60s. Back in the day, scoring weed meant finding a dealer, convincing him you weren’t a narc and listening to lies about the potency of his product. Then you handed over $10 and got a baggie partly filled with something that looked like oregano with lots of seeds.
City officials have taken the first step toward possibly allowing marijuana sales by calling for a study of exactly where zoning would allow a dispensary.
This week, the council voted to authorize the city manager to look into what areas in the city would abide by the state’s guidelines regarding dispensary locations.
Councilman Joseph Delaney said council members felt it was important to look into the possibility, because the tax incentives would benefit the city.
The new legal industry
Possession of six ounces or less of marijuana — and using it on private property — is now decriminalized in New Jersey for people ages 21 and up. That means you can’t be criminally charged for it.
So far though, it still isn’t technically legal to buy or sell recreational marijuana, and won’t be until state officials write regulations and award licenses to the businesses that will make up the new legal market.
The illicit pot shop where Kelvin worked wasn’t an outlier: In fact, the majority of shops in LA are unlicensed. In the entire city, only 184 pot shops, less than 1 in 5, are licensed. Many Angelenos have no idea that the place they buy their cannabis—or in Kelvin’s case, report to work—might be operating outside the law. This gray-market section of the industry established itself over more than a decade, between about 2005 and 2018, when local politicians were reluctant to regulate an industry that was breaking federal law.
If New Jersey voters approve the November ballot question on legalizing recreational marijuana, how quickly could the state see those first sales for "adult use"?
By mid-2021, depending on how quickly state lawmakers follow-up, according to New Jersey CannaBusiness Association President Scott Rudder.
"In order to hit the ground running, you want to do what you can with what you have available," Rudder said.
Adult-use cannabis dispensaries in Massachusetts that have been temporarily closed for the past two months as part of emergency orders to shut down nonessential businesses will be allowed to offer curbside pickup beginning Memorial Day.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker discussed his four-phase plan to reopen businesses in the state, one of the top five in the U.S. hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, during a press conference May 18. The plan is to reopen the economy slowly in phases, and as part of the first, retailers in the state can offer curbside pickup starting May 25.