HAWTHORNE, NJ – Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat who handily defeated former Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno in the race to succeed Chris Christie, made the legalization of marijuana one of his chief policy goals. Some boroughs, however, including Hawthorne, have responded with preemptive legislation to prohibit businesses from the sale of medical and/or recreational marijuana in the event the governor is successful in his goal.

Zoning Ordinance 2207-18 states that its purpose is “Prohibiting Businesses Engaged In The Sale Of Medicinal And Recreational Marijuana Or Paraphenalia In Any Zoning District” and the full ordinance itself can be found here.

Borough council meetings tend to be tranquil affairs but the issue of marijuana legalization is a controversial one, and Hawthorne’s council chamber was witness to moments of passionate debate at the previous meeting.

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Republican Councilman Bruce Bennett took issue with the ordinance and represented the only voice in opposition. Bennett began by reading part of the ordinance, which reads as follows: “WHEREAS, the Borough of Hawthorne consists of 3.2 square miles and over 18,000 residents with residences, schools, churches, recreational facilities and family oriented businesses located throughout the entire community...” He then continued. “My first question is, how many bars and liquor stores do we have in Hawthorne?”

“We have two liquor stores and sixteen active licenses, I believe,” Borough Attorney Michael Pasquale said.

“And would we consider those recreational facilities or family-oriented businesses?”

“Is that a rhetorical or actual question?” Pasquale asked.

“That’s an actual question.”





“I don’t know what you would call them,” Pasquale said. “Some of them are family restaurants like Puzo’s or Shortway’s, some of them are more traditional bars, so they run the gamut.”

Bennett read on from the language of the ordinance. “Apparently we are ‘concerned about the establishment of any business engaged in the sale or distribution of medicinal or recreational marijuana in or near any of these uses and wishes to ensure that no such use is established within ¼ mile of such use or zoning district permitting the same.’ Why? We don’t prohibit bars, the sale of alcohol, or the consumption of alcohol near schools.”

“Are you asking me to compare alcohol to marijuana?”

“If it becomes legal in the state of New Jersey, yes,” Bennett replied. “In fact, there are legitimate medicinal uses for marijuana. I can’t think of too many medicinal uses for alcoholic beverages.”

“That’s true.”

Bennett continued. “So it would seem to me that we should be prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol ¼ mile from schools before we worry about the sale and use of marijuana. And I’m not talking about the use because it’s an off-license situation the way they are debating it. You have to buy it retail and take it home or somewhere else.”

“I’m not going to debate with you whether the council should or shouldn’t adopt this ordinance,” Pasquale said. “I drafted the ordinance and leave it to the council to decide whether or not to adopt it. I will say that there are significant differences between alcohol and marijuana. Such as one of them is legally federally and one is not. And there is a significant issue there presented by the fact that the federal government doesn’t recognize marijuana as a recreational drug, it does recognize alcohol for better or worse.”

Bennett said, “If enough states legalize it, the federal government will have to change. But if it’s legal in New Jersey, I don’t see the problem here, I really don’t.”

First Ward Councilman Joseph Wojtecki, the only Democrat on the council, sided with the prohibition ordinance. “I think one of the things that I have a challenge with is that the amount of alcohol that stays in your system after consuming alcohol, is very short in a period of time. Most businesses, including the borough of Hawthorne, do not allow you to test positive for drugs whether they’re legal or illegal, and marijuana stays in your system and hair follicles for up to thirty days. So how do you say, where do you now draw the line by saying it’s legal but you’re not allowed to consume it and then come to work? And how do you prove whether they’re under the influence or not under the influence? I think there’s too many—we’re going to make it legal and then work on what is legal and illegal after? I’d like to see us working on what’s legal and illegal afterwards prior to make-it-legal and let’s try to hash out the problems.”

Bennett was unmoved. “That’s exactly the same situation that occurred when they instituted tougher DUI laws. Up until a point, there was no such thing as a breathalyzer test. Once they started establishing minimum levels it no longer became a judgment call, they invented the equipment to test it.”

“Well, let’s invent it first and then make it legal,” Wojtecki pushed back.

“That is not the way the system operates.”

Mayor Goldberg said, “There is no test that will tell whether someone is impaired using marijuana except with a specially trained police officer. We have one for the thirty-two on staff now, we would require at least one per shift.”

“The mayor makes a fantastic point,” Wojtecki said. “Once again, and I know that you have said this comment yourself, Bruce, you’ve said ‘here we are, once again, the state of New Jersey making a law and they’re not funding it.’ Well, here they are making something legal and they’re not funding it.”

“I think it’ll fund itself,” Bennett replied.

“I disagree.”

“We’re not, by preventing the sale in the borough of Hawthorne, we are not preventing people driving through it using it,” Bennett countered.

Wojtecki, who is the Assistant Director of Customer Experience at Clara Maas Medical Center in Belleville and former Food Services Director of Irvington General Hospital, tied the discussion of marijuana in with other drugs. “Come work with me in the emergency room for one day and see what comes through with marijuana, with opioids, and it is disgusting. And I am at the point now where I’ll be happy to vote yes, I want to pass this.”

“I bet you see the same thing with alcohol,” Bennett said.

“It is such a shorter period of time with alcohol.”

“It takes the same amount of time to do the damage, initially, if you’re driving under the influence,” Bennett said.

Councilman John Lane spoke up. “One of the things that I said at the last meeting was, and first of all I just want to thank Michael, as part of the ordinance committee and administration, the state of Colorado passed that it’s legal, but there’s 173 communities out of the 238 that have ordinances that prohibit the sale of marijuana in their communities. And they also have the money that they’ve taken in, which is, from what I understand, a tremendous amount of money, they can’t spend it because there’s some federal laws saying why they can’t spend it, why they can’t use it.”

“They can’t put it into a federally chartered bank because it’s illegal,” Goldberg said.

Lane continued. “I look at this, and I defer to my colleague about the emergency room, I for one, being on the ambulance corps, have taken numerous people to different hospitals, that are under the influence of some kind of drug, not alcohol, but some kind of drug. Once in a while we get something with someone who is under the influence of alcohol, but there’s more drugs, that we take to a hospital than there are alcohol. So I think that this is good. And, you know what, I just sent something to Michael and to the mayor with regard to the quote that our governor did say, how fast he’s going to work on this. Yes, he may work on it, it may become a law, but it’s going to be years before they get through with the fine-tuning of the law and how it’s going to be enacted. And I think this is something we have to be proactive with and do this now.”

Bennett disagreed and his fellow councilmen ceded that that was his opinion.

Second Ward Councilman John Bertollo, who heads up Hawthorne’s Boys and Girls Club, joined the debate. “I can tell you that, working with a youth organization my adult life, working with youth, working with the DARE program, working with the ROAR program, municipal alliance for many years, I was a charter of the municipal alliance when it was created, everything we’ve learned from experts in the field is that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder and harsher drugs. Well, you can shake your head, Bruce, but those are the facts.”

“Those are not the facts!”

“Well, you say it’s not,” Bertollo fired back.

“Where did you learn it from? ‘Reefer Madness’ that movie we grew up with in high school?” Bennett’s reference to the now-cult-classic 1936 propaganda piece directed by Louis Gasnier, which depicted high school students’ lives collapsing into an abyss of desperation, rape, prostitution, and murder as a result of smoking marijuana, struck a nerve with the Council Vice President.

“Don’t insult me with those comments, these are from experts in the field! These are from law enforcement people, from medical people, they have their opinions on it. Yes, there are people who have opinions that differ and that’s what you need to sort out.”

“That’s why it’s becoming legal.”

Bertollo was clearly annoyed and blasted the governor, criticizing Murphy’s plan to fund community college tuition through revenues from marijuana sales. “I, for one—no, that’s not why it’s becoming legal. It’s becoming legal because Governor Murphy wants the tax ratable so he can give free college out to everybody in this state. That’s the fact of it, it’s got nothing to do with it, it’s about the money that can be brought in. You know what his statement was? ‘We’ll have so much money that we can increase the law enforcement for the issues that we’re going to have.’ Can you imagine that? Let’s enact a law, knowing that we’re going to have problems in law enforcement. I, for one, I have no problem in passing this, and if I get more information down the road, I’m very open minded to it—for forty something years, all I’ve been taught from experts is that this is not a good thing to make recreational. This is not a good thing that our youth should be involved in. First of all, look at the money we spend in drug prevention, look at the money we spend in tobacco prevention, and alcohol prevention, you just want to keep adding to that? What does it cost us in our medical insurance—?”

“We allowed a vaping store to open up in the middle of the town,” Bennett said. “Why didn’t we stop that?”

“Because vaping is legal,” Bertollo replied, “they’re vaping a mist.”

“Well, this will be, too, by the time we get down the road here.”

“My point, Bruce, is that I think we need to be proactive and put this in place,” Bertollo said. “I have an open mind, I don’t know if I believe everything I hear, I plan on going to the cannabis workshop down in Trenton to listen to the pro people on why it should be done. But it leaves a bad, bad taste in my mouth when the only thing I hear from the governor and legislators that are for this, is the amount of money and taxes that we’re going to get, so that we can give free college or we can give more programs away. Not one comment has been that we can take that money and off-set property taxes. We have the highest taxes in the country, and they’re not saying a word about that. I listen to our police department, our experts in the field. They’re not saying this is a great idea. Until somebody can prove to me that there won’t be any side-effects to this or ramifications down the road, to be quite honest, I joke around when I say it, I’d rather see him legalize prostitution if he wants the tax money, because at least when you leave a cat-house or whatever, you don’t get in the car and kill somebody because you’re stoned. We could be ridiculous, look at it like that, so… I think we’re being proactive, I think it’s the right thing to do, and time will tell. I guess we’ll have to address this down the road and there’ll be more discussion on it.”

Bennett was undeterred. “A year ago we made a big deal in this council about proclaiming Hawthorne a stigma-free community. We all came in wearing silly green t-shirts, put up signs all over town, and if you pass this ordinance, you are stigmatizing a group of people who are simply looking to make a living by selling something that will be legal.”

“No, I disagree, you’re comparing apples to oranges,” Matthews said. “A stigma is for someone who has a mental-health problem, this is a choice.”

“I thought that was for all groups?” Bennett asked.

The Oxford English dictionary defines “stigma” as “A mark of disgrace associated with a person, a personal quality, or a personal circumstance.” Hawthorne Stigma Free, like Paramus Stigma Free, Morristown Stigma Free, Ramsey Stigma Free, and other municipalities which sport the green and black slogan, is an entity which describes itself as being “proudly committed to being an inclusive and welcoming stigma-free community and providing information on education, treatment and support” particularly with respect to mental health advocacy.

Wotjecki then asked the mayor to explain what the costs of additional police training would be. “I make the assumption we’re going to have to train all of them.”

“We’re going to have to have a minimum of one per shift, but then they go on vacation—” Goldberg said, his sentence cut off.

“Right, I want to know what are all the additional costs that are going to be associated—”

“Yeah, but, Joe,” Matthews interjected, “I don’t even agree with that premise because, basically, yes, they are getting trained on things to look for, but it’s still a judgment call on that officer. Until they draw blood and find something, and like you said, it could be thirty days in your system, so there’s no percentage of correlation to how much, when, and whatever. We’re discussing it, and that’s a good thing, Bruce is obviously not in favor of it.”

“I respect Councilman Bennett’s libertarian view,” the mayor said, “because, if you remember, he was against helmets for kids riding bicycles, any time government regulates anything, I think the councilman has an issue with it. I understand that he is consistent in his feelings, doesn’t necessarily make him right or wrong, but he’s consistent.”

Matthews posed a question to his colleague. “Bruce, where do you stand on menthol cigarettes?”

“I never tried one,” Bennett said.

“My point being is, your premise is that the state’s going to make it legal, let’s follow what the state is saying.”

“Yes.”

“The state is now looking to ban menthol cigarettes because it entices kids to smoke,” Matthews said. “Well, you can’t have it both ways.”

“If they want to prevent smoking they need to outlaw cigarettes altogether. That’s not happening, it’s a legal product,” Bennett said. “And we let bars and liquor stores operate within close proximities to schools,” he said, referring to Washington Elementary School on Mohawk Avenue, which is within 700 feet of Hawthorne’s only strip bar. “We let a vaping store open in the middle of town, but now we’re suddenly getting our back up.”

“Actually,” Goldberg said, “there are restrictions with liquor licenses and schools, how far they must be, some were grandfathered in because they were there before the regulations came in. We do have school zones for drugs where the penalties are more severe, so the state and the borough have a history of being proactive trying to protect children from alcohol, from drugs, and you have to be 21 now to buy cigarettes, so…”

Matthews cut in. “Dropping the ball on this one, Mayor, because obviously your kids can go get somebody to buy them cigarettes for them if they’re under 21. Don’t tell me–this is going to be the same thing for under 21 kids that are going to now want someone to go buy them some pot to use.”

“I don’t doubt it, same thing buying beer, it’ll all be done by somebody finding somebody to make the purchase for them.”

Matthews decided to shift the topic and took aim at the upper levels of government. “I ran for office to try to make Hawthorne better and make our own decisions. Not to rely on the county, because God knows they don’t do a great job, and God knows, not the state. So as far as I’m concerned, we make our own decisions whether the state says something or other, if it’s contrarian we need to re-address this further down the road, if the impacts become negative due to this ordinance we’ll evaluate it, but I’m in favor of taking the stand and saying no. You want to do it in your house? Fine, but just because you buy it doesn’t mean you’re going to adhere to the law that says you’re supposed to take it home. In Colorado, just look at the neighborhoods around where they sell it. They’re not policing the people smoking pot because they said just do it.”

“I’ll take a look when I get out there in May,” Bennett said.

Matthews was looking to move on. “Well, feel free, but until this happens—it’s a majority and democracy rules, so, roll call.”

Bennett – “No.”

Bertollo – “Yes.”

Lane – “Yes.”

Sinning – “Yes.”

Wojtecki – “Yes.”

Matthews – “Whole-heartedly yes.”

Councilman Dominic Mele was not present.

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