When Gov. Phil Murphy came into office, he vowed to legalize marijuana within 100 days.

Now? It's looking like weed may not be legalized until 500 days into Murphy's tenure — at the earliest.

The push for New Jersey marijuana legalization hit a roadblock last month when scheduled votes on the bill to legalize weed were postponed. While the bill had enough votes to pass in the Assembly, the support wasn't there in the Senate.

Instead of watching the bill fail, legislative leaders decided to regroup in the hopes of winning over holdouts on legal weed.

AS IT HAPPENED: NJ cancels legal weed vote due to lack of support

Now, after watching the Legislature blow by nearly a dozen self-imposed "deadlines" on a legal weed vote, Murphy has laid down his own: If the votes aren't there to legalize weed by the end of May, he'll move to expand medical marijuana by executive action — which could throw a wrench into those recreational marijuana plans.

Here's what you need to know about the latest attempt to vote on legal weed:

When are they going to vote on marijuana legalization?

The earliest a legal weed vote can be expected is May. That's according to a deadline placed by Murphy, who has vowed to expand medical marijuana access by executive action unless the Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act is passed by then.

"We’re not going to wait around a lot. I’m prepared to hold off for a short amount of time, but we’re holding back enormous demand for more access" to medical marijuana, Murphy said at a press conference last week. "I’m still confident we can get it done legislatively and I’m prepared and certainly open-minded and quite supportive for the Legislature to go back at it and find those last couple of votes we didn’t quite get.

"But that can’t be an unending calendar."

According to the Legislature's website, an Assembly voting session is scheduled for May 23 and a Senate session is set for May 30. But the same strategy by Murphy and leading legislative Democrats still applies: They won’t put the bill up unless it has enough votes to pass. And that support hasn’t been finalized yet.

“I think it’s possible we can get this done in May,” said Sen. Nick Scutari, D-Union, primary sponsor of the marijuana legalization bill. “But we can’t pass it unless we have the votes.”

If May comes and goes without a legal weed vote? It's up in the air. If Murphy and legislative leaders are determined to pass it sooner rather than later, legal weed could be tossed around like a political football during the 2019-20 budget negotiations.

If not, it's more likely that they revisit marijuana legalization after the November elections, as Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, has said numerous times.

Questions about marijuana legalization? Email Mike Davis and you could featured in an upcoming "Marijuana Mailbag" feature!

Were legislators ever actually going to vote to legalize marijuana on March 25?

One view was that proponents didn't have the votes that morning but held out hope they would have enough by day's end.

Obviously, that didn't happen. But when the dust settled, the Assembly had enough votes to pass legal weed.

And the Senate was only one to three votes short — and that kind of momentum is tough to turn around, said attorney Bill Caruso, who serves on the board of New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform, the state's leading marijuana legalization advocacy group.

"If they had another day, they would have been there. That's how close it was," Caruso said. "But I think a wise decision was made to hold off. There was such a short time between some very good and very substantive changes to this bill that confused a lot of folks. So they made a wise decision to stop trying to push it through."

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What's the 'worst case scenario' for the legislators who want to legalize weed?

If all else fails, there's always a ballot measure.

But it works differently in New Jersey than the nine states that legalized weed through referendum. In those states, citizen groups can place an issue on the ballot simply by gaining enough signatures on a petition.

In New Jersey, all ballot questions must come from the Legislature. That means, even if the issue of legal weed is left to Garden State voters, the Senate and Assembly will still have to pass it first.

RELATED: Why NJ legal weed bill is a national model for social justice

The idea is that a ballot measure would win over some legislators who are voting "no" on the issue but would be comfortable leaving it in the hands of voters.

So why don't they just put it on the ballot?

While a Monmouth University poll reports that 62 percent of New Jerseyans support legal marijuana, no ballot measure is a sure thing.

Taking the issue to the ballot would change the politics behind pot: Instead of focusing on specific groups of lawmakers and constituents, legal weed advocacy and opposition groups would try to sway public opinion with wall-to-wall advertisements and commercials, similar to a hotly contested election.

And plenty of underdogs have won at the ballot.

"When you go through the legislative process, you have more compromise. People need to buy in and believe in what they're voting for, as opposed to keeping it at arm's length and simply letting the will of the people decide," said Paul Seaborn, who teaches Business of Marijuana at the University of Denver.

But it's also important to note that the language of a potential ballot question would be a shell of the 167-page, in-depth marijuana legalization bill currently up for debate in the Legislature.

Instead, voters would likely be asked to simply vote on whether marijuana should be legalized, taxed and regulated. Figuring out everything else would be left up to the Legislature, Caruso said, and that could push a lot of the bill's social justice provisions (which have made it a national model) to the wayside.

"When you vote on this legislatively, you get to telegraph everything you're going to do in the bill," he said. "If the Legislature is just given a blank check by the voters, people would be motivated for different reasons. We have the luxury of making this very difficult decision and looking at it in a global way. There is a need to get this right."

Why does Murphy want to expand medical marijuana?

It's a long time coming, advocates say.

There are only six licensed medical marijuana dispensaries currently in operation in New Jersey, with another six approved but currently tied up in legal battles. But with a patient registry now topping 45,000, the program is quickly outgrowing the resources available.

Among the many faults cited by the Department of Health in its biennial report last week was an inability to keep up with patient demand. The Health Department suggested the state license at least 44 additional dispensaries and 18 cannabis cultivation facilities in order to keep up with patient demand.

The Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act would address many of the issues reported by the Health Department, including directing the licensure and opening of more medical marijuana dispensaries within six months.

It would also increase the legal amount patients could purchase to 3 ounces per month, legalize edible forms of medical marijuana and phase out the state sales tax on purchases.

So why hasn't Murphy just expanded medical marijuana on his own?

It's a political move.

While at a press conference after the legal weed vote was cancelled on March 25, Murphy said we'd hear more about an exponential medical marijuana expansion "in the coming days."

That announcement never came. Instead, that effort was held up as doing so would constitute "de facto legalization," as some legislative observers put it, essentially dooming the legal weed bill as many on-the-fence legislators wouldn't feel the need to get on board.

“I can understand why, and I think it’s important to (expand the medical marijuana program), but if you proceed in an aggressive fashion, you’ll give people and our a reason not to vote for cannabis legalization,” Scutari said. “And you’ll miss an opportunity to do the social justice reforms that are important to all of us.”

COLUMN: Stop playing games on medical marijuana, Gov. Murphy

Nonetheless, the marijuana legalization bill is divisive. That's led to legislative leaders linking it with the medical marijuana bill, which would likely pass both chambers easily.

The hope among proponents is, a few legislators who are undecided on legal weed may vote for it — if it means expanding medical marijuana access.

"Coupling these things, it's destructive," Sen. Declan O'Scanlon, R-Monmouth, told the Press last week. "There's a moral problem here. We're withholding medication from people like Jake (Honig, the namesake of the medical marijuana bill) in order to twist the arms of people who might not be inclined to vote for recreational marijuana. That’s a problem."

The Asbury Park Press and USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey has been at the front of the push toward — and fight against — marijuana legalization in the Garden State. We produce deep dives into underreported angles of this monumental discussion, mailbags with reader questions and live updates of the latest twists and turns in the Legislature.

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Mike Davis; @byMikeDavis: 732-643-4223; mdavis@gannettnj.com