In response to the Sept. 24 article “NJ marijuana legalization could wipe weed arrests off your criminal record, racial and social justice advocates around New Jersey, including those in the New Solutions Marijuana Reform Coalition, have been calling for marijuana legalization legislation in New Jersey to include automatic and retroactive expungement.
Intertwined with the legal weed debate is a discussion over expungements, the process by which an offender can have a crime retroactively and completely removed from their criminal record. An expunged crime is "considered not to have occurred," according to the New Jersey courts system, but requires a formal court petition and hearing.
State officials are currently negotiating on a marijuana legalization bill that could be the most forward-thinking in the country, said Jake Hudnut, Chief Prosecutor in Jersey City, NJ. The bill, if signed into law, would mean the immediate release of inmates serving time for non-violent pot crimes.
No home-grow
As much as some marijuana advocates want to be able to grow at home, this bill does not allow home-grow.
Lawmakers have said that it's a nonstarter.
Now, the DPA-led New Solutions Campaign, a broad coalition of New Jersey-based advocacy groups, is on the brink of helping enact a new law that would allow broad legal cannabis sales in the state.
The New Jersey coalition has focused on civil rights and an equitable approach to the cannabis industry. The political wind is at their back: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy ran on legalizing cannabis during his 2017 campaign, framing it as a Civil Rights-era wrong.
Tens of thousands of low-level marijuana convictions could be erased with the OK of Brooklyn's top prosecutor, under a new plan for wiping records clean of offenses no longer being prosecuted in parts of the nation's biggest city.
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced Friday he is inviting people to request conviction dismissals. He expects prosecutors will consent in the great majority of a potential 20,000 cases since 1990 and an unknown number of older ones.
Mayors from some of the largest cities in New Jersey today warned that recreational marijuana dispensaries wouldn’t be welcomed in their boundaries unless people with marijuana convictions were released from jail and their records get expunged.
Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla met in Newark City Hall to tell lawmakers that those provisions and others needed to be passed in order for them to get behind recreational marijuana.
Compared with some of its regional neighbors, Delaware isn’t making rapid strides toward legalizing adult-use cannabis. But it has taken significant steps toward decriminalizing possession and use. Earlier this year, we reported on the bi-partisan effort led by the Delaware Assembly to clear past minor marijuana convictions. And on Wednesday, Governor John Carney signed SB 197 into law, providing mandatory expungement eligibility for most minor marijuana charges between 1977 and 2015, the year Delaware decriminalized possession and use up to an ounce.
Two bills being crafted by state legislators could revolutionize the marijuana industry in New Jersey if they are successfully passed into law. Provisions of the measures include home delivery of cannabis products, removing a cap on dispensaries, and automatic expungement of some past marijuana convictions.
New Jersey policymakers already are loosening restrictions on marijuana for medical use and could make it much easier for adults to buy the drug even without a medical reason. The state's more permissive approach to a drug that's technically still illegal under federal law is proceeding on three tracks.