Sweeney says he’s working with Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin on bills they can advance that would expand New Jersey’s medical marijuana program and make recreational pot use legal.
He says the medical bill will be tied to the recreational use measure and won’t move forward without it.
New Jersey officials expect sports betting to bring in $13 million this fiscal year. Legalizing recreational marijuana could mean $300 million a year. And that eventuality moved closer to reality Monday as New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney said he’s oping lawmakers will act by the end of summer on such a bill.
Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin are working to coordinate bills for expanding the state’s medical marijuana program, as well as legalizing recreational use for adults.
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.
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.
Gov. Phil Murphy and top legislative leaders met privately Thursday morning to discuss a potential budget compromise and plan to meet again this afternoon, the first glimmer of hope in nearly a week as the state heads toward a possible shutdown.
Murphy met with state Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin for an hour or two inside the governor’s office on West State Street, according to several lawmakers and officials familiar with the discussions. They broke just before noon and expect to resume their talks around 3 p.m. Sources said no deal was cut.
State lawmakers are revising how much the state would earn from the taxation of recreational marijuana in the fiscal 2019 budget – nothing.
They’ve penciled in $60 million in state revenue from taxes on medical marijuana, according to Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-22nd District.
Scutari, who advocated for the recent expansion of the medical marijuana program, said the $0 revenue projected from recreational cannabis simply acknowledges that such uses is currently illegal – regardless of anyone’s future aims.