TRENTON - Another month has gone by, another "deadline" has been missed and another state has voted to legalize weed before New Jersey.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, set a goal of voting on legal weed by Oct. 29. It was the fourth "deadline" missed by the Legislature, which creeps closer to missing Gov. Phil Murphy's vow of legalizing marijuana before year's end.

Did you miss "Let's Talk About Marijuana," our panel discussion and Q&A onmarijuana legalization? Check out the highlights in a video at the top of the page!

Now, legislators are targeting the Monday after Thanksgiving as the next milepost in the push for legal marijuana in New Jersey.

But don't bank on it.

Since the last missed deadline, another state has joined the legal weed ranks: Michigan voters approved Proposition 1, which will legalize marijuana and charge a 10 percent tax on sales, which are expected to begin in 2020. And in Utah and Missouri, voters passed measures to expand medical marijuana access.

LIVE FROM DETROIT: What you need to know about Michigan legal weed

On the other side, North Dakota voters overwhelmingly shot down a legalization measure, which marijuana legalization opponents have said is proof that "legalization is far from inevitable."

While the waiting may be the hardest part for New Jersey marijuana legalization advocates, attorney and weed proponent Bill Caruso said the process should take a while if legislators are serious about addressing social justice concerns that are integral to the legalization debate.

"There's an entire process that has to occur to get this right. It's realistic that by the end of the year, if the racial and social justice pieces are done, the Legislature will have the votes," said Caruso, who co-founded New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform, a marijuana legalization advocacy group.

Last month, NJUMR decried the most recently amended version of the marijuana legalization bill introduced in Trenton earlier this year because it didn't include a process to "reinvest in communities harmed by the drug war" — including helping people in those communities get involved in the cannabis industry.

The group also wants any New Jersey legal weed bill to include the automatic expungement of marijuana convictions on the books and allow residents to grow marijuana at home.

LEARN ALL ABOUT IT: Home grow a major sticking point in NJ legal weed talks

Here's an FAQ regarding the latest on New Jersey marijuana legalization:

What's the holdup?

There's a multi-step process involved, starting with the re-introduction of a new and revamped New Jersey marijuana legalization bill. Legislators and Murphy are still at odds over facets of the bill, most notably a tax rate on legal weed.

Last month, Sweeney said the Legislature had settled on a 12 percent tax rate, which would be among the lowest taxes on marijuana in the United States. But Murphy's 2018-19 budget projected a 25 percent tax rate on marijuana.

Trenton officials say they are still negotiating.

OK, but when are they going to figure this out and vote on legal weed?

Once the new bill is introduced, it must go through the committee process. The Assembly has circled Nov. 26 as the date for a committee vote, the only other day the Legislature is in session this month.

Yeah, sure. Nice try. I've heard that before.

There's plenty of reason to be skeptical when it comes to the New Jersey Legislature, marijuana and specific dates as legislators have blown through every other "deadline" set by their leaders.

But if a committee does approve the legal weed bill on Nov. 26, it could set up a floor vote by the Senate and Assembly on marijuana legalization before the end of the year — assuming either chamber has the votes, which is still up in the air.

While on a state-sponsored business trip in Europe last month, Murphy said he was "all in" on helping Sweeney win over state senators who are holding out on voting for legal weed.

Voters in Michigan legalized weed with the passage of Proposition 1. What's that mean for New Jersey?

There's not a direct impact, but it could provide new insight.

Michigan will become the closest point of comparison to the Garden State when it comes to legal weed. It has a population of about 9.9 million. It is the 10th-most populous state in the country. New Jersey, with an estimated population just over 9 million, is no. 11.

And Michigan will likely be the only state with legal weed in the Midwest for the near future, meaning would-be marijuana users in Chicago and Cleveland would only have to drive two hours to the Michigan border to buy or consume legal weed.

Similarly, if New Jersey can beat out its neighbors in Pennsylvania and New York, that could make the Garden State the go-to destination for legal weed in the mid-Atlantic.

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But the most important players won't be marijuana customers, University of Denver professor Paul Seaborn said. Instead, it will be the Michigan visitors who will see that legal marijuana has had minimal impacts on day-to-day life.

“The societal impact is really hard to imagine until you experience it — not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s not,” said Seaborn, who teaches a class of the business of marijuana.

“Michigan is a state that has close neighbors, and lots of flow back and forth on a weekly basis. Even if people in those neighboring states don’t go anywhere near the system, they get to see that life goes on, that states are able to accommodate this in a pretty unintrusive way."

Will the failure of North Dakota Prop 3 have any impact on New Jersey?

It's certainly energizing legal weed opponents.

The failed ballot measure in North Dakota was the first attempt by marijuana legalization advocates to legalize weed in a strongly conservative state. It failed by a wide margin, 59 percent to 40 percent, which opponents have said means that legalization isn't pre-ordained.

Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Stephen Reid said the failure of North Dakota Prop 3 went hand-in-hand with votes to expand medical marijuana access in Missouri and Utah.

"It was such good news. I was a little disheartened with Michigan, but with North Dakota and two states that went with medical marijuana instead (of legalizing weed for recreational purposes)? That's good for us," said Reid, who is also the executive director for marijuana legalization opposition group New Jersey Responsible Approaches to Marijuana Policy.

IN HIS TOWN: Point Pleasant Beach bans marijuana sales of all kinds

"People are starting to talk about it more in terms of their neighborhood. They're seeing how it's affecting workers, their children. They're starting to look at it differently," Reid said.

NJ-RAMP is the state chapter of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a national group opposed to marijuana legalization. In the aftermath of the North Dakota vote, SAM president Dr. Kevin Sabet said it was proof that marijuana "legalization is far from inevitable."

But the reality is that North Dakota isn’t the best example to compare with New Jersey, Seaborn said. It has only 8 percent of the Garden State's population and the ballot question may have gone differently if the cannabis industry had gotten more involved.

“When you look at it on a map, it seems like North Dakota is a big deal but (the cannabis industry are) going to spend time and effort where it reflects best on their position,” Seaborn said.

With this kind of delay, why didn't New Jersey just try to legalize weed by ballot initiative?

While many other states allow voters to place a statewide issue on the ballot, all New Jersey ballot questions must first go through the Legislature.

While it might have been easier to get a holdout legislator to vote "yes" to place marijuana legalization on the ballot — essentially washing their hands of the final outcome — Caruso cautioned against such a practice.

In states where marijuana was legalized on the ballot, it's been a two-part process: Pass the law, then figure out the rest. That's led to issues in states like Massachusetts, where voters legalized weed in 2016 with the idea of marijuana sales beginning on July 1, 2018. Four months later, Massachusetts marijuana sales haven't begun.

HIGH HOPES: Legal weed changed everything in Colorado & California. What can we expect in New Jersey?

Instead, New Jersey legislators are handling everything at once.

"We're making a better bill. The ability to throw it on the ballot, sure, you'd have a lot more votes for that," Caruso said. "But then you come back to the Legislature and carve up the spoils. In Jersey, that's a really gross process. I'm happy we're doing both at the same time to make sure we'll address the appropriate racial and social justice concerns."

And despite all this, marijuana was actually on the ballot in some New Jersey towns: Voters in Vineland approved medical marijuana facilities, while Union Township voted "yes" to non-binding ballot questions to allow marijuana sales in their town if weed is eventually legalized. Bridgeton voters voted "no" to similar questions.

What’s the status of marijuana legalization and what does it mean for NJ and you? Join our Facebook group, Let's Talk About Marijuana at fb.com/groups/WeedNJ to discuss what's going on in your town, in the world of cannabis dispensaries and businesses, and the social justice issues at the center of it all.

Trenton Bureau reporter Nicholas Pugliese contributed to this report.

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