Despite months of infighting and stalled negotiations, New Jersey's top lawmaker said Thursday the state Legislature could vote to legalize marijuana in the Garden State as early as next month.
"I think it's gonna be soon," state Senate President Stephen Sweeney told NJ Advance Media when asked if it's possible the state will legalize recreational pot use by the end of the year. "We'll have the legislation done. Then you have to do the regulations and everything else."
“These amendments can take it to the next level,” Holley said, adding that his changes could be plugged right into Scutari’s bill. Holley thinks these changes will win enough votes to pass recreational marijuana in New Jersey.
Here are the biggest changes Holley proposed:
No limits on dispensaries
Scutari’s bill capped the number of dispensaries at 218 -- 98 medical marijuana dispensaries and 120 recreational shops. Holley’s plan wouldn’t set a cap at all, allowing state regulators to determine how many marijuana retail locations there would be based on the demand.
Tucked inside a nondescript commercial warehouse here sits a sophisticated marijuana-growing operation. A custom filtration system feeds a proprietary cocktail of nutrients into a hydroponic, two-level farming system. Two pallets of crops are harvested every day, and the 15,000 square feet will eventually yield two tons of marijuana per year.
And it’s all legal.
New Jersey did not legalize recreational marijuana as part of the state’s newly enacted budget, but Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and a key lawmaker say it will get done soon.
Advocates of legalization say they’re trying to overcome decades of stigma as well as a federal prohibition in an effort to make New Jersey the latest state to legalize cannabis. But they say they remain optimistic that bills will pass the Democrat-led Legislature this year. Opponents point to the legalization effort’s slow going as a sign the effort could stall out.
New Jersey's rush toward legal marijuana has slowed to a crawl.
Gov. Phil Murphy's first 100 days in office came and went without a legal weed bill passing the Legislature. Then, on July 1, Murphy signed a state budget that does not anticipate non-medical marijuana sales in the next year, forcing the administration to strip out $60 million in revenue that it had anticipated from taxes on the drug.
Gov. Phil Murphy’s first hundred days in office came and went without legalized marijuana, as he’d promised to get done as a candidate. Now his first budget is approved, still without taxes from legalization.
Top Democrats are now saying it could be approved before Labor Day.
Murphy’s original budget plan in March counted on $60 million from adult-use, recreational marijuana sales starting Jan. 1. But the budget he signed Sunday includes none of that, though there’s still $20 million from sales of medical marijuana.
As June burned to a close, lawmakers in Trenton were still scrambling to pass a budget by the end of the month and avoid a government shutdown. Surprisingly absent from negotiations was one of the main platforms on which Gov. Phil Murphy ran for office: marijuana legalization.
Despite support from top lawmakers, marijuana reform couldn't get done before the June 30 budget deadline. It's now been delayed until at least later this summer.
Don't hold your breath for movement on legislation to legalize marijuana before Saturday's state budget deadline.
Legislators and industry insiders say it's going to be kicked down the road until after New Jersey gets a budget.
Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, who proposed his recreational/medicinal marijuana mashup just three weeks ago, told NJ Advance Media there'll be no push to get legislation done this week but he believes it could be hashed out over the next month.
The probability of an adult-use marijuana bill passing in New Jersey before a June 30 budget deadline reportedly is declining, but lawmakers still look poised to approve recreational MJ within the next year, according to a policy analyst and advocate.
The current effort is hitting a snag because of state budget squabbles as well as lack of consensus over the details of a marijuana industry, according to NorthJersey.com.
For the past several years, the question of whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults has been a hotly debated topic across the country. The 2017 gubernatorial race brought this debate to New Jersey, when then-candidate Phil Murphy proclaimed that one of his goals for his first 100 days as Governor would be the passage of legislation to legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults. While those 100 days have come and gone without the passage of such legislation, Governor Murphy remains committed to the legalization of recreational marijuana.