New Jersey\u2019s governor and legislature agreed to terms earlier this month to allow S830 to move forward, the bill that would legalize marijuana for adults and create a regulated marketplace in the state.<\/p>\n
New Jersey\u2019s legislature has been considering legalizing cannabis for the last four years. Last month, the ball got rolling again when State Sen. Nicholas Scutari filed\u00a0S830<\/a>, which has brought new hope to the state\u2019s citizens \u2014 especially\u00a0after reports emerged on Feb. 15<\/a>\u00a0that the state\u2019s Gov. Phil Murphy had reached a deal with legislators about how the industry should be regulated.<\/p>\n Scutari joined\u00a0CBS2\u00a0<\/a>last week to give the rundown on where things are at a month after filing the bill, following the big deal with the governor reported around Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n One of the first things Scutari noted was the tax structure. As opposed to a tax that works as a percentage of gross sales, which most states with legal cannabis use, New Jersey is looking to tax cannabis by weight.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will be a $42 excise tax on every ounce that is sold, regardless of price,\u201d Scutari told CBS2. \u201cThere will be a three-year look-back in case we need to reevaluate that because it is a possibility that the price goes down so low that $42 becomes unmanageably high.\u201d<\/p>\n Another part of the deal with Murphy was increasing the executive branch\u2019s authority over the market place. Scutari said a five-person oversight commission \u2014 formed to set prices and regulations \u2014 would include three direct appointments from the governor. They\u2019ll be taking a look down the road to make sure taxes are still at the right level. If the price of an ounce drops below $100 in Jersey, you\u2019re looking at a gross tax rate that would likely send people back to the illicit market,\u00a0as has happened in other places.<\/a><\/p>\n Many advocates are psyched for legal weed in New Jersey but hope the patients aren\u2019t getting left behind in backroom dealings between lawmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a flat tax is a reasonable solution as long as there\u2019s an exclusion for social programs, such as low-income discount programs,\u201d New Jersey NORML Executive Director Evan Nison told Cannabis Now. \u201cFlat taxes have prevented dispensaries from continuing these types of programs in other states, but other than that it would have my support.\u201d<\/p>\n However, even if the bill passes through New Jersey\u2019s state house quickly, it is unlikely that the new program be implemented in 2019. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has said<\/a> that it\u2019s likely legal cannabis sales won\u2019t start until at least 2020.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to understand the history of the idea of legal marijuana in\u00a0New Jersey<\/a>. Few places exemplify the American renaissance on cannabis quite like New Jersey, given how far the state has come since the days of New Jersey\u2019s former Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who was\u00a0one of the great anti-pot champions<\/a>\u00a0of the last decade, despite the changing public opinion in favor of the plant.<\/p>\n One time in 2014, a radio caller to\u00a0NJ 101.5<\/a>\u00a0asked Christie about legalization, citing the revenue places like California and Colorado were bringing to their coffers. \u201cLet me just stop you right there,\u201d Christie replied. \u201cYou say it\u2019s going to come down the road. You know when it may come down the road? When I\u2019m gone. Because it\u2019s not going to come when I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Christie was ready to go with talking points he read from a study, noting the impacts of marijuana on motivation and emotion centers in the brain. He said he wouldn\u2019t be the governor that would tell children and young adults that marijuana use was OK.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care about the tax money that may come from it, I don\u2019t care quite frankly that people think it\u2019s inevitable. It\u2019s not inevitable,\u201d said a grimacing Christie. \u201cI\u2019m not going to permit it, never. As long as I\u2019m governor. You want to elect somebody else who is willing to legalize marijuana and expose our children to that gateway drug and the effects it has on the brain? You\u2019ll have to live with yourself if you do that, and it\u2019s not going to be this governor who does it.\u201d<\/p>\n But the residents of New Jersey proved very prepared to live with themselves, as\u00a01.2 million<\/a>\u00a0came out to vote for Phil Murphy in 2016. As governor-elect in November 2017, he explained his thought process on why he personally wanted to legalize marijuana, while addressing the concerns of some state senators around law enforcement training and general NIMBYism about dispensaries.<\/p>\n \u201cWell listen, there is a visceral reaction to this, and by the way, when I first thought about it, I had a visceral reaction to it. I got four kids, one of whom is here,\u201d Murphy told\u00a0reporters from NJ.com<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0noting his oldest was 20 and the rest were teenagers. \u201cSo this is not something you get to lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n Murphy said, first and foremost, this was a social justice issue, and that New Jersey\u2019s gap between arrests of white and black people was largest in America. He also noted it wasn\u2019t the only reason, but a big reason was to end low-end drug crimes. \u201cAnd we have to fess up to that,\u201d said Murphy.<\/p>\n Murphy was also glad the Jersey market would benefit from watching other states go first.<\/p>\n \u201cWe spend an enormous amount of time trying to study things that didn\u2019t go right in places like Colorado, Nevada, Oregon\u2026 we want to get this right,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, to folks who are saying, \u2018I don\u2019t want this done improperly,\u2019 neither do we.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, are you excited for New Jersey to legalize cannabis?<\/p>\n The post New Jersey Is So Close to Legal Cannabis You Can Smell It<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
New Jersey\u2019s governor and legislature agreed to terms earlier this month to allow S830 to move forward, the bill that would legalize marijuana for adults and create a regulated marketplace in the state. New Jersey\u2019s legislature has been considering legalizing cannabis for the last four years. Last month, the ballContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,216,214,4069,90,687,215,8074,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33202,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201\/revisions\/33202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New Jersey\u2019s Path to Cannabis Legalization<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: New Jersey Is So Close to Legal Cannabis You Can Smell It<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"