The governor seemed dazed and confused when reporters on Wednesday and Thursday asked him if he had ever tried marijuana. | AP Photo/Mel Evans Murphy clears the air: I’ve smoked weed ‘once or twice’

Gov. Phil Murphy smoked marijuana “literally once or twice,” he said Thursday on Twitter, following two days of questions on the topic.

“Here’s the deal: I’ve tried marijuana literally once or twice many years ago, and I don’t have any desire to partake again. But this effort isn’t about me - this is about social justice,” Murphy tweeted.


Murphy, during his campaign, promised voters he would legalize recreational marijuana and signaled to lobbyists it would be a 100-day agenda item, but more than three months into his term, the effort has seemingly faltered. Despite support from Senate President Steve Sweeney, lawmakers on the left and the right have been reluctant to embrace full legalization.

The governor seemed dazed and confused when reporters on Wednesday and Thursday asked him if he had ever tried marijuana.

“I've never been a marijuana guy — this is for social justice,” Murphy said Wednesday, refusing to answer a question about whether he had ever smoked.

Asked on Thursday by The Record’s Charles Stile if he had ever partaken, Murphy said, “Ah, Jesus Charlie,” before leaving the podium.

But shortly after refusing to answer for a second time, Murphy tried to turn the attention away from himself and toward what he sees as the larger injustice of marijuana arrests.

“There are 24,000 marijuana-related arrests each year in NJ, with black residents arrested at three times the rate of white residents. NJ has the largest black-white incarceration gap in the nation - that's shameful, and legalizing marijuana is critical to reducing that disparity,” Murphy said on Twitter.

While the debate on legalization continues, Murphy has vastly opened up the state’s medical marijuana program by allowing patients with new conditions to qualify for the drug. The Christie administration had kept the program small with strict policies and slow implementation.