The landing has been anything but smooth. Nevertheless, on April 21, adults ages 21 and up will be able to legally purchase up to an ounce of marijuana per sale in New Jersey. The state’s marketplace will open its doors well ahead of its neighbor, New York, which legalized adult-use around the same time but has not yet established a legal marketplace. New Jersey’s head start is poised to make the state among the largest marketplaces on the Eastern Seaboard with some estimates projecting sales of at least $2 billion within the year.
New Jersey’s turbulent rollout has included several missed deadlines, including a blown February 22 deadline to create rules for the marketplace, and another missed deadline in late March that would have delayed legal sales further still. These delays did not go unnoticed and they garnered the ire of many folks around the Garden State, including Senate President Nicholas Scutari. A longtime advocate and key architect of New Jersey’s legalization push, Senate President Scutari issued a call for a bipartisan special committee last month to investigate the state’s penchant for blowing past deadlines in setting up a legal marketplace. Within days, the Cannabis Regulatory Special Commission held a meeting where it agreed on the date of April 21 to officially begin adult-use sales.
Senate President Scutari’s commitment to see the legal marketplace open is commendable, but by his own admission, New Jersey’s work is not finished. At the signing ceremony, Senator Scutari laid out his vision for New Jersey as one that ushers in “a new era of social justice by doing away with the failed policy that criminalized the use of marijuana.”
While the delays that thwarted the state’s ability to commence sales have been spotlighted numerous times, the state’s commitment to undoing the harms caused by the criminalization of cannabis has gained much less wattage. Despite early stories heralding the
state expunging 362,000 marijuana and hashish
cases, it is still unclear how many
people have been able to receive this relief. Moreover, much less is known about other components of New Jersey’s efforts to identify and dismiss cases and release individuals under state supervision with eligible marijuana and hashish cases.
If standing up a legal marketplace is an example of legislative mettle, New Jersey’s lack of follow-through on the criminal justice components of its legalization bill is a prime example of legislative inertia. In order to create the New Jersey Senate President Scutari hopes for, and one which the Last Prisoner Project is dedicated to achieving, much more time and attention should be devoted to these issues. To learn more about LPP’s current work in New Jersey visit our
New Jersey Clemency Campaign page.
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