Toms River Council Tables Marijuana Ordinance

TOMS RIVER, NJ -- After more than an hour of public comment on a proposal to ban the commercial sale of recreational marijuana in the township, the Toms River Township Council voted to table the ordinance Tuesday night.

The ordinance, which was on the agenda for a final reading and vote, would have banned "the sale, resale, purchase, acquisition, distribution, dispensation, and cultivation" of marijuana or paraphernalia for recreational use. Medical marijuana would have been exempted.

The majority of speakers opposed the ordinance, citing issues ranging from the potential financial impact of commercial marijuana sales to the impact on accessibility for those seeking medical marijuana relief to the potential impact on the opioid crisis.

"Please consider me and everyone else who is suffering," said Dave Lansing of Toms River, who said he has a medical marijuana card that allows him to purchase marijuana for relief of pain due to Crohn's disease. Before he used medical marijuana, it took 100 milligrams of oxycodone to keep his pain at bay. With medical marijuana, he uses at most 15 milligrams of oxycodone, which is a powerful and powerfully addictive opioid pain killer, per week.

Jim Miller of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey, said he has been fighting for the availablity of it for more than 20 years. The coalition was started in part in memory of his wife, Cheryl, who battled multiple sclerosis until her death in 2003. He said the wait to get into the medical marijuana program is an average of six weeks, and urged the council to reconsider to prevent suffering on the part of those who get relief for medical conditions from marijuana.

A Spotswoood man named Richard echoed those sentiments, and said medical marijuana had allowed him to leave his home for the first time in three years after suffering from debilitating PTSD and multiple sclerosis.

"I am no longer on any opiate medication thanks to cannabis," said Richard, who had been a licensed clinical social worker before MS forced him out of work. "I worked in that field for 16 years and I can honestly tell you that 90 percent of those I treated (who were battling drug addiction) started with something completely different (from cannais)," he said.

Samantha Mathis of Toms River said medical marijuana allowed her to reclaim her life instead of being "being a zombie.""The stigma that once you smoke marijuana you will move on to (other drugs) is not true," she said. "Medical marijuana saved me."

The only person who spoke in favor of the ordinance was Rory Wells, a former assistant Ocean County prosecutor who now is a lawyer in private practice and who works with the organization RAMP, Responsible Approaches to Marijuana Policy. Wells said the ordinance was important to protecting Toms River's reputation, which he said should be one where people talk about things such as its restaurants.

But another speaker, Debbie Mazza of Toms River, said the area already has a negative branding relatned to heroin abuse. Marijuana would not add to that negativity, said Mazza, a real estate agent.

Hugh Giordano, who represents the United Food and Commerical Workers union, said commercial marijuana sales will provide jobs and a measurable economic impact for the area that will help in multiple areas of the economy.

"This (ordinance) is a direct attack on labor unions," Giordano said. adding that the union has worked to find ways to assist the recreational marijuana industry in several ways, including allowing deposits of cash into its credit union to help reduce the attractiveness of businesses that are forced to deal in cash because marijuana is still illegal under federal statutes and as such, businesses that deal in it cannot put their money in federally insured banks.

"It doesn't matter if it's Democrats or Republicans (behind the ordinance)," he said. "We want good living wage jobs."

The ordinance was tabled with a 6-0 vote -- Councilman George Wittmann, who had pushed for the ordinance, was absent Tuesday -- until the state passes legislation legalizing marijuana, which Gov. Phil Murphy made a central issue during his election campaign.

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