Fortunately for New Jersey, we now have a 21st century governor who wears Allbirds shoes, uses social media and is totally comfortable texting constituents. Despite an old-thinking legislature, Governor Phil Murphy keeps pushing his agenda that recognizes the need to increase the state’s tax revenue and finally do something about mass transit and the state’s crumbling infrastructure.
Gov. Phil Murphy is giving the Legislature limited time to pass recreational marijuana and the bill it’s connected to that would expand the state’s medical marijuana program. Otherwise, he said, he will turn his focus to medical marijuana expansion.
The Tri-state battle over recreational weed began in 2017, when New Jersey voted in Governor Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs higher-up who defeated his predecessor Chris Christie's lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, by vowing to fight against Donald Trump's policies, raise the minimum wage to $15, and legalize recreational marijuana as soon as possible. All within the first 100 days, he assured everybody.
Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration is walking back its public plans for expanding New Jersey’s medical marijuana program after fielding concerns from state legislative leaders, a senior administration official said Tuesday.
“The medical announcement is on hold based on our conversations with the Legislature. We determined at the time being, we’re going to work on passing this legislatively,” the official told POLITICO. “That’s not to say at a later juncture we’ll not increase supply rapidly … [but] right now, we’re on hold. We’re all in on the legislative strategy.”
A monthslong effort to legalize marijuana in New Jersey collapsed on Monday after Democrats were unable to muster enough support for the measure, derailing a central campaign pledge by Gov. Philip D. Murphy and leaving the future of the legalization movement in doubt.
The failure in the Legislature marks one of the biggest setbacks for Mr. Murphy, who, despite having full Democratic control in the State Senate and Assembly, has faced constant party infighting and has struggled to convince lawmakers of his progressive agenda.
For the past few months, Gov. Phil Murphy, who campaigned for office on a platform of legalization, and Democratic state lawmakers had been hard at work trying to garner support from state legislators. Yet the bill reportedly did not get the 21 votes necessary to pass in the state senate, with some lawmakers concerned that legalization could pose a threat to public safety. Another vote likely won’t take place until at least November, according to Sweeney.
The state Legislature today is scheduled to make a decision on marijuana legalization, with the landmark bill to legalize, tax and regulate weed scheduled for votes in the Senate and Assembly.
Either the legal weed bill will go up for a vote, putting New Jersey on track to legalize marijuana as soon as the coming days.
Or Gov. Phil Murphy and top Democrats won't be able to secure enough "yes" votes, admitting defeat and putting off marijuana legalization until later this year.
They don’t have the votes in the senate tonight to legalize recreational marijuana tomorrow but the front office kept leaning to try to extract the 21 votes required to get it done.
They seemed to be stuck at 17 or 18, depending on who you asked, and a source said Senate President Steve Sweeney’s (D-3) people wanted Governor Phil Murphy to bench press the final three or four votes.
It looked grim, as the neophyte governor attempted to button hole upper chamber lawmakers with time ticking down.
His hail mary appeal?
Republicans.
New Jersey’s path to marijuana legalization once looked easy.
Phil Murphy, the state’s unabashedly liberal governor, has made legalization one of his top legislative priorities since his election in late 2017. But on Monday, when the state Senate and General Assembly are scheduled to vote on a bill to legalize recreational cannabis for adult use and introduce sweeping reforms to wipe clean the records of current and past marijuana offenders, its fate is far from certain.
Days ahead of a planned vote in the Legislature that would make New Jersey the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday that the measure is short of the votes needed to pass.
The Democrat spoke Thursday during a news conference alongside more than a dozen supporters of the bill, including the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and said he and legislative leaders are "making progress, but we have a ways to go."