The ideas New Jersey residents offered up Wednesday night were equally varied.
“If you ask 10 people what is social equity, you’ll get 10 different answers,” warned Hasaan Austin, one of the first speakers.
Joe Johnson of Newark urged the commission to give or loan “significant funding” to applicants from impact zones, saying other states that failed to do so fell short in their social justice goals.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (NJCRC) is hosting a series of public hearings to take testimony from residents on how to best utilize collected fees from the sale of cannabis products to improve their communities and promote social equity. The meetings will be broken up into three separate virtual hearings for North, Central, and South Jersey. The dates and times for the Central and South Jersey meetings are as follows:
Expungement clinics. School buses. Wheelchair ramps. Cannabis community centers. Training for rookie entrepreneurs. Grants and no-interest loans.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission heard all sorts of ideas Wednesday night from 15 people during an hourlong virtual public hearing held to solicit input for how the state should spend tax revenue from the new recreational marijuana market when sales eventually begin.
The commission also heard plenty of ideas on how they should not spend the money.
Maybe. But, consider this: If recreational shops were to open this month, or if medical shops were approved to sell recreational cannabis—as Gov. Phil Murphy suggested in a recent interview with WBGO—it actually wouldn’t be that much longer of a process than in other states. In Colorado, which was the first of two states to allow recreational cannabis sales (with Washington), 14 months passed before the first 37 stores opened their doors. Washington took 20 months.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission, which was created to establish and enforce the rules and regulations governing the licensing, cultivation, testing, selling, and purchasing of cannabis in the state, has announced regional hearings. The topic will be using social equity revenue for community good.
On Feb. 3, during Black History Month, the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission sent out a celebratory tweet.
It didn’t go over well.
The comments section was immediately barraged by a host of people asking one fundamental question: How many Black people had been licensed to grow and sell weed?
When adult use sales begin in New Jersey — which, according to the governor, will be in a matter of “weeks” — the products will look a bit different.
The Cannabis Regulatory Commission held a meeting on Thursday during which regulators gave licensing updates, talked about concerns related to cannabis smoke and air quality, and fielded testimony and questions from residents. Regulators also approved a resolution to adopt a universal symbol for cannabis packaging.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (NJ-CRC) will be hosting three virtual meetings to listen to public suggestions for how funds raised from cannabis fees and fines should be used for social equity projects. Input collected at the meetings and in written submissions will inform the Commission's recommendations to the governor and legislature.
The meetings will be held on Wednesday, March 2, Wednesday, March 9, and Wednesday, March 16 and chaired by Commissioners Krista Nash and Charles Barker.
No date has been set for the long-awaited launch of New Jersey’s recreational cannabis industry, but cannabis officials are already moving for dispensaries to sell a wider array of THC products.
During the Cannabis Regulatory Commission’s meeting Thursday, officials unanimously voted to pass a waiver for medical marijuana providers to produce and sell cannabis concentrates.
But the Cannabis Regulatory Commission is also looking ahead to what the industry will look like once it gets off the ground so held a public hearing Thursday on what its rules should include regarding indoor and outdoor marijuana consumption lounges.
Suzaynn Schick, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco who studies air pollution and smoking, said smoking and vaping lounges aren’t safe for the people who work there, as cannabis smoke has the same potential health effects as smoke from cigarettes.