New Jersey’s cannabis legislation is moving fast. The Garden State will soon allow recreational use and sales, joining 14 other states in America’s recent Green Rush.
The state’s passage of Question 2 in the Nov. 3 election legalized adult-use cannabis, but now it’s up to the Legislature to establish the detailed rules. Leafly went deep into the weeds of NJ’s 200-page bill and came away with the key takeaways you need to know before the scheduled December 17 vote.
Anyone who came within a slight ocean breeze of Atlantic City’s beaches or Boardwalk this summer, has stayed on a hotel floor with smoking rooms or played at a packed blackjack table on a weekend night knows marijuana is being smoked in and around casinos.
The distinctive aroma has been wafting around Atlantic City for years, and tourists could be excused for mistakenly believing that using marijuana was already permitted in the resort.
And that was before New Jersey voters overwhelmingly approved legalizing recreational cannabis in November.
New Jersey lawmakers will consider a plan Monday to implement new marijuana laws.
Garden State voters approved the legal use of recreation marijuana in the November election.
Longtime marijuana legalization activist Ed Forchion (known as the “NJ Weedman”) has filed a forty-four-page federal lawsuit against New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy alleging New Jersey’s voter referendum to legalize weed was a bait-and-switch tactic. In his lawsuit, Weedman alleges that voters were tricked into approving a corporate takeover of New Jersey’s longtime booming underground marijuana market. The case may hinge on whether there is a legal difference between the words “marijuana” and “cannabis.”
It’s a fair bet that in New Jersey, when Democrats in power start talking about “diversity,” they’re simultaneously sticking it to minorities. In this case, marijuana legalization provided the forum in which to do damage as those same individuals used as part of a pre-Election Day human barricade in the name of social justice found themselves summarily scrapped post Election Day as that apparently unnecessary ingredient in legislative leadership’s pro-business bonanza.
In my role as founder of the international organization Doctors for Cannabis Regulation (DFCR), and as a founding steering committee member of New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform (NJUMR), I have supported people’s right to home cultivation both here and around the country.
Looking for a job in a growing field?
Stockton University in New Jersey is cosponsoring a virtual career fair this week that will offer students opportunities in the cannabis industry.
Not all the jobs involve working with plants. There are legal jobs, accounting-related opportunities, and positions in communications, marketing, and health fields.
Now that adult-use cannabis has been legalized in New Jersey and the state legislature is ironing out how the program will run—prospective and established business owners hoping to participate in the new mid-Atlantic market should begin preparing now, according to Robert DiPisa, a real estate attorney and co-chair of the Cannabis Law Group at the firm Cole Schotz, which handles cannabis business law for real estate, license applications, fundraising, intellectual property, and more.
The NJ CannaBusiness Association was started by Deveaux and his colleagues at Burton Trent Public Affairs based in Trenton, NJ following an information gathering trip to several western states that had previously legalized cannabis. “We decided that the industry in New Jersey would need a professional organization to lead its efforts,” Deveaux explained. “We co-created the NJ CannaBusiness Association whose main role is to actually start a responsible and sustainable cannabis industry in New Jersey.”
"Most people thought they were voting to legalize marijuana when in fact if you read the amendment and our existing marijuana laws, marijuana will remain illegal and I think the state bamboozled the citizens, hoodwinked them in the voting to give certain people — these 'cannabis cartels' — the opportunity to make billions while still continuing to illegalize the masses of us," Forchion said to New Jersey 101.5.
Forchion owns a restaurant, NJWeedman's Joint, near the Statehouse.