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The mayors of New Jersey’s two biggest towns won’t allow marijuana dispensaries in their cities unless they are happy with how the legalization bill addresses previous weed convictions.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop joined a handful of other town leaders from across the state Wednesday to call for stronger social justice provisions if legal weed were to come to New Jersey.

“It has to be changed in order for us to move forward,” Baraka said of the legalization bill, citing “deep-seated inequalities” in the current version. The mayor bemoaned people making millions of dollars off of marijuana if it’s legalized, while others would still be dealing with the ramifications of marijuana convictions.

Baraka called for the “automatic and immediate” expungement of marijuana possession and distribution convictions for amounts up to 50 grams, just shy of 2 ounces. That goes beyond what’s been proposed so far.

“We will have a hard time supporting legalization without expungement,” Fulop said.

On the issue of expungements — which means wiping away past convictions from someone’s criminal record — the two mayors have friends both in the governor’s mansion and at the State House.

Gov. Phil Murphy has long said his motivation for legal weed is to provide a modicum of justice for the hundreds of thousands of people in New Jersey who have been arrested on marijuana charges in the past 30 years. He repeated his call for expungements as part of his legalization plan in the State of the State address earlier this month.

Several state lawmakers have been working on expungement legislation over the past year and one version of the bill was passed by both state Assembly and Senate committees in November. Assemblyman Jamel Holley said recently that the expungement legislation remains a work in progress, though he favors provisions similar to those suggested by Baraka and Fulop.

The announcement that Newark and Jersey City wouldn’t support marijuana dispensaries without more social justice provisions puts additional pressure on lawmakers as they could be set to restart weed negotiations next month.

Losing access to the state’s two biggest potential marijuana markets would be a huge blow for legalization, especially considering that the mayors have generally been supportive of legal weed. If Newark and Jersey City were to go that route, they’d join more than 60 other towns that have already banned marijuana businesses.

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Payton Guion may be reached at PGuion@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaytonGuion. Find NJ.com on Facebook.