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As the Garden State looks to legalize cannabis, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has two priorities: a greater bite of revenue for municipalities and social justice.

In a recent interview with NJ Cannabis Insider, Baraka shared his thoughts on what he believes is necessary to get larger cities on board.

"Big cities, where most of the money is going to be generated, ought to get a significant piece of that (tax revenue) -- to be able to create an infrastructure to manage and monitor the sale of cannabis in our cities, as well as other things we think are necessary, whether it's education or giving our people the opportunity to participate in the cannabis industry," Baraka said. "The state and their revenue should able to give some to the cities."

The sticking point between the most recent version of the proposed adult-use bill provides for municipalities to impose a two percent excise tax on cannabis sales and receive one percent of tax revenue generated by sales in their town. Larger cities like Newark, Jersey City and Hoboken, however, have said they're looking for five percent of gross tax revenue and an excise tax.

In terms of social justice, Baraka said he believed "expungements should deal with all cases of marijuana."

"We're not just allowing people to intake it, we're also allowing people to distribute it," Baraka said. "I think it's hypocrisy to allow people to distribute it and then lock people up because they distributed it. This doesn't make any sense."

Baraka said he believed if the political will was present in Trenton it wouldn't be as much of an issue to do the expungement process right.

"Other municipalities around the country have come to grips and have either passed full comprehensive expungement legislation or are in the process of doing so," he said. "We have to learn from the errors that other people have made, so we should start off not behind but in front of them. There's an argument that the state doesn't have the capacity to expunge people's records. I think that's B.S."

Baraka said he also believed there needed to be language in the bill addressing areas disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs -- social impact zones.

"We absolutely need that. We need to give people a leg up," the mayor said. "When they first started the legislation, they were trying to prohibit people who had records, who had cannabis records, to even participate in the industry. Which I think is completely ridiculous."

He continued: "Right, there are people who can cultivate, process, all of this other kind of stuff, who understand how to do that. If you gave them some certification, or some other kind of thing, they could work in these processing plants and get a decent job in a field that they know, with a skill. It just doesn't make any sense to isolate a whole group of people from that."

Justin Zaremba may be reached at jzaremba@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinZarembaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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