NJ Marijuana Legalization Bill Is Dead: Voters Will Decide

Top lawmakers announced Wednesday that they're dropping legislative efforts to legalize marijuana in New Jersey.

Now they'll ask voters in November 2020 refererndum to legalize recreational pot, Senate President Steve Sweeney announced on Wednesday. Lawmakers will have to amend the state Constitution to do it.

They'll also expand the state's medical marijuana program and expunge the records of many residents with past convictions.

"We will move forward with the expansion of our medical cannabis program as well as the progressive social justice reforms in the expungement legislation," Sweeney said on Twitter. "We will not, however, pursue the legalization of adult use marijuana at this time."

The Murphy administration said it will comment on the situation later in the afternoon.

Read more: 9 Changes To Expand Marijuana Access In NJ As Legalization Stalls

Sweeney said he wants to act now to expand the medical cannabis program and achieve progress on social justice reforms with legislation to revise procedures and eligibility for the expungement of criminal records.

“Adult use marijuana will be legalized in New Jersey but it won’t happen now,” said Sweeney. “It would have been best to move the adult use and medical expansion bills at the same time, but it is wrong to hold the medical and expungements bills hostage.

"We want to move forward to help transform the state’s medical marijuana program and to achieve the progressive reforms for social justice.”

Sweeney also said he is working with Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and the sponsors of the medical cannabis and expungement bills to update the legislation.

The medical marijuana bill, S-10, would allow medical use for a more extensive list of diagnosed conditions, increase the number of dispensaries, expand the list of professionals who can authorize patient use and increase access to caregivers and the amount of cannabis that patients could obtain, he said.

The legislation will also phase-out the tax on medical cannabis.

The bill allows any physician, physician assistants, advanced practice nurses and other health care providers to prescribe cannabis for a wider range of conditions. It would also expand access to designated caregivers, including those in hospitals or nursing homes, substantially increase the amount patients could obtain, allow terminally ill patients unlimited amounts and provide new legal protections for participants, Sweeney said.

The expungement bill, S-3205, would reform the process for the expungement of criminal records.

The legislation would establish a “clean slate” expungement which would allow someone ineligible under the new provisions to apply. The individual would be eligible 10 years from the date they were released, completed probation or completed parole or whichever came last.

The measure would allow for the expungement of controlled dangerous substance convictions of the third or fourth degree. This would allow all convictions for controlled dangerous substance crimes to be treated the same as other crimes and offenses in terms of eligibility for expungement, Sweeney said.

Coughlin, D-Middlesex, said he was disappointed that the bill failed but he also expressed encouragement that the state will likely expand its medical marijuana program and revise the process of expungement.

“I’m disappointed that we are currently unable to pass the adult-use cannabis bill. I agree with the Senate President’s decision to move ahead with a bill to fix the flaws in the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act and make medical marijuana more accessible to patients who could benefit from it," he said. “For many suffering from critical and chronic illnesses, increasing access to medical marijuana will mean the difference between being able to participate in life or having to suffer every day with intense pain and debilitating symptoms.

Sources close to Patch say negotiations slowed to a crawl since Gov. Phil Murphy's administration has been investigating whether corporations misused tax breaks in past years, including one company owned by Democratic powerbroker George Norcross, a close ally of Sweeney.

If marijuana legalization was going to happen, it needed both Sweeney and Murphy on the same page, scrambling to get the votes needed to pass the legislation. Efforts to pass the bill earlier in the year fell about 5 votes short. Read more: New Jersey Cancels Vote On Marijuana Legalization

If it's approved in November 2020, pot wouldn't be sold in stores for another six months to a year after that because of the lengthy regulatory process that needs to be developed.

There was hope for marijuana legalization advocates recently. Murphy had recently withdrawn plans to announce a big expansion of the state's medical marijuana program, a move that would have quadrupled it to serve as many as 200,000 patients.

Murphy agreed to hold off, sources told Patch, because lawmakers worried that they would lose leverage in getting as many as five Democrats to change their minds and agree to vote in favor of legalizing marijuana.

Patch recently reported that Murphy and top lawmakers were turning their schedules upside-down to get it done, and lawmakers believed it could be brought back to a vote as soon as May.
But that scenario looks like it's changing again.