Phil Murphy's play for NJ legal weed is no 'slam dunk as marijuana opponents rally

Running for governor last year, Phil Murphy generated great expectations for legal, recreational marijuana.

Ending the old war on marijuana was a way of ending a long-held social injustice, as Murphy pitched it to voters. Far more African-Americans were arrested and convicted under the laws criminalizing marijuana than whites, he argued.

And, by the way, new tax revenue from that legalized marijuana was also going to be a key part of the $1.3 billion that Murphy planned to raise to cover his big ambitions — expanded preschool, an overhaul of NJ Transit, beefed up payments to the pension system.

Murphy had a sympathetic public and a Democratic Legislature in his corner. In the grand scheme of legislative challenges, this one seemed like it was going to be an easy lift for him now that he is governor.

It isn't turning out that way.

While New Jersey may be a reliably blue state, African-American lawmakers, who saw their communities ravaged by heroin in the 1970s and the crack epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, are wary about the legalization, even though blacks are arrested three times more than whites, despite similar rates of usage, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mayors cast nightmare visions of long lines of pot buyers outside the doorway of dispensaries on Main Street or at a local strip shopping center. Even in liberal enclaves like Princeton, officials worry that dispensaries might drag down property values.

Others are calling for an interim step — lift the criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana but not for dealers, traffickers and growers. Critics point out that "decriminalization" of small amounts will not snuff out an illegal black market of dealers. If anything, it will flourish.

And those seeking a cautious, first step argue that the focus should be expanding and improving the state's medical marijuana program, which was tightly regulated and slowly rolled out under Gov. Chris Christie.

Rob Cressen, the former executive director of the Republican State Committee during former Gov. Christie Whitman and Christie's administrations, was struck with a rare neurological disorder in 2011, and has remained in constant pain. The once-burly athlete now gets around in a motorized wheelchair.

"Simply put it's about liberty, the liberty for adults to make our own choices on how we medicate and how we recreate. Cannabis has saved me," Cressen told legislators at a Trenton hearing on Monday.

Cressen, who is on the board of directors of the New Jersey Cannabusiness Association, said he had to have someone drive him one hour to a dispensary in Woodbridge to get his prescription.

On one level, the resistance and logjam of competing interests is reminder that New Jersey is rarely on the first or even second wave of social change. It's a cautious and moderate state, and moves slowly into the future — even when there is lots of money to be made.

Eight states, beginning with Colorado and Washington in 2014, allow no-questions-asked marijuana use among adults, while sales in Vermont are due to begin later this year.

"The governor thought this was going to be a slam dunk," said Hope Mayor Timothy McDonough, the former president of the New Jersey League of Municipalities. "It's not going to be a slam dunk."

Yet, in some ways, the stakes for legalizing recreational marijuana have increased. While it enjoys the support of Senate President Stephen Sweeney, the Gloucester County Democrat, many Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are opposed or neutral on the issue. It would not pass the Senate if posted today, according to one recent tally.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, has also taken a less-than-enthusiastic posture, vowing to let all sides have their input before moving ahead.

Further complicating matters is that another Murphy priority, raising taxes on millionaires, appears to be in jeopardy. Sweeney, whose relations with Murphy appear to be in a deep frost, says the tax hike should be a measure of "last resort." His opposition could kill it, and with it, the possibility of the raising up to $500 million to $600 million.

In other words, Murphy is going to need revenue from legal marijuana sales to help if he is to present a balanced budget plan.

Murphy will show his hand next week when he rolls out his much-anticipated state budget for the fiscal year 2019. That budget could include how much his administration plans to collect from the new program. To some, the number, even a small amount — no one expects the state to collect $300 million on a brand-new program in the first year, given start-up delays — will be significant.

That budget number will give Murphy a starting point for negotiations with hesitant legislators. This early out, with only a vague outline of a proposal to work with, lawmakers generally sit on the fence, leveraging their vote.

"Adding legalization to the budget process means this will be an item that will be negotiated in June,'' said Bill Caruso, a founding member of the pro-legalization group, New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform and a former executive director of the Assembly Democrats.

"If it isn’t in the budget, I‘m not signalling the legalization death knell, but It will make things more difficult,'' he said.

Caruso remains optimistic that Murphy and the Legislature can get this passed by June. He recalled how Christie, a Republican, and the Democratic Legislature, shepherded through the seemingly impossible reorganization of the state's university medical school system in 2012. It was a goal that eluded three of his predecessors.

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That may be true, but Christie was at the height of his political power at that point, a governor who seized power and imposed strict party discipline on wavering Republican lawmakers. Christie and Sweeney collaborated on the deal. Their relations, on the whole, were warm. It was a bipartisan axis of power.

Murphy is new at Trenton's inside game. Sweeney is an old hand and may not be eager to help him out. Murphy created these expectations and now he's going to have to meet them, or face the fallout of a first-year flop.