Automatic Expungement

New York marijuana regulators are finally moving to allow medical cannabis patients in the state to grow plants for personal use, and they’ve provided an update on progress toward expunging prior marijuana conviction records.

At their second meeting on Thursday, New York’s Cannabis Control Board (CCB) voted unanimously to file the proposed regulations, which would allow qualified patients to cultivate up to six plants—indoors or outdoors—for their own therapeutic use.

Since the beginning of July, the New Jersey Judiciary has expunged more than 362,000 marijuana and hashish cases from court records, potentially making life much easier for many folks seeking employment or housing.

But, because the goal is to keep these records out of the public's eye, the only way for one to guarantee that their case has been expunged is through an in-person visit to the court.

The Marijuana Decriminalization Law, which took effect July 1, 2021, required the expungement of certain marijuana and hashish cases. As a result, the Supreme Court has ordered that thousands of cases be expunged.

An expungement means this case is no longer part of your record.

You do not have to report this case on a job application, housing application, or college application. The case has been removed from the public record and cannot be used to keep you from school, housing, or most jobs.

At the start of the fall semester, Kennedy Mattes ’23 founded an expungement initiative as an outgrowth of Students for Prison Education, Abolition, and Reform (SPEAR), a student group that has led a wide range of criminal justice related campus protests — from University divestment from private prisons, to “ban the box,” a movement to eliminate the conviction history question from undergraduate applications.

Newark resident Andre Hunter was thrilled to learn that an offense for possession of marijuana for which he was convicted in 2004 might have been cleared from the court’s public records — meaning he would no longer have to report it for college admission, while applying for a job or on a housing application. Expungement, Hunter said, opens doors he thought were forever closed.

The New Jersey Courts launched an awareness campaign last week to notify people if they had prior convictions for low-level offenses involving marijuana or hashish that those convictions were wiped from their records.

Once a case has been expunged, a person no longer needs to disclose their former conviction on applications for jobs, housing, or educational programs.

The New Jersey Judiciary announced on Thursday that the state has expunged more than 362,000 marijuana cases since July 1, when a decriminalization law took effect that mandated the relief for people who have been caught up in prohibition enforcement. The courts also said that they will be launching a public education campaign next week to help even more people understand the opportunities for relief under the law.

In the meantime, roughly 1,200 people have also been released from probation since their cannabis expungements were processed.

New Jersey courts have either dismissed or vacated an estimated 362,000 marijuana cases since July 1, according to data provided by the state Judiciary and reported by NJ.com.

As a New York-based cannabis entrepreneur, I celebrated as New Jersey's vote to legalize adult use cannabis passed by large margins last month. Unfortunately, that joy quickly soured: Legislators put forth a plan – A-21/S-21 – that lacked key social equity provisions won in other states, including allocating funds to help communities harmed by the War on Drugs and clear opportunities for minority communities to participate in the industry.

A senior adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recently reiterated that, if elected, his administration would pursue decriminalizing marijuana and automatically expunging prior cannabis convictions.

Symone Sanders discussed the campaign’s criminal justice agenda during an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, emphasizing that Biden and his vice presidential running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will prioritize the modest drug policy reform proposals.