Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Not everything is legal in New Jersey (yet), but recreational marijuana is, starting Monday, Feb. 22. Three bills legalizing adult-use marijuana sales, creating a regulated marketplace and decriminalizing possession of personal-use amounts of cannabis have been signed into law by New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
“New Jersey’s broken and indefensible marijuana laws, which permanently stained the records of many residents and short-circuited their futures, which disproportionately hurt communities of color and failed the meaning of justice at every level, social or otherwise, are no more,” Murphy announced Monday.
Unlike states like Arizona, where a ballot initiative is directly transcribed into law when approved by the voters, New Jersey required legislative action to apply the results of the referendum on legal weed led in the state last November. New Jerseyans approved the Marijuana Legalization Amendment that was on the ballot with more than 67% of votes expressed in favor. The next months were spent in heated debate on the best way to implement it.
Debates have been raging in New Jersey for the past four months, in particular regarding how testing for marijuana should be handled, how licenses should be issued and how people younger than 21 caught with marijuana should be treated. The latest issue has been a sticking point for Murphy. While the original legislation was available to the governor as early as December, he refused to sign it until changes were applied, in particular regarding penalties for youth—fueled by worries that young people of color could still be arrested for possession under the original proposal.
On February 22, the Democratic-led state Assembly and Senate passed new legislation to reduce the penalties for underage possession of marijuana down to a written warning and potential community service for subsequent violations. Instead, it increases the liability of the adults who provided the minors with the product.
Will of the Voters
“We are fulfilling the will of the voters by allowing adult-use cannabis, while having in place common-sense measures to deter its use among kids,” said Gov. Murphy. “This process has taken much longer than anticipated, but certainly, it is better to get things right than fast.” Phil Murphy had been advocating for legal marijuana for years; it was a campaign promise he tried to accomplish since his election in 2018. This new law marks the end of a years-long saga that ended with legal adult-use weed for his state and a greatly increased pressure to follow for neighboring New York state.
The state’s Attorney General called for the suspension of all marijuana possession cases as early as November, and the substance is now officially legal. It might take months for marijuana to be legally available in retail before a few more months, as the state was just able to take its first step towards regulating the now-legal cannabis market. However, until then, marijuana possession arrests can be put aside, and the livelihoods of thousands upon thousands of nonviolent drug offenders in New Jersey will be spared.
