Asbury Park Press

In response to the Sept. 24 article “NJ marijuana legalization could wipe weed arrests off your criminal record, racial and social justice advocates around New Jersey, including those in the New Solutions Marijuana Reform Coalition, have been calling for marijuana legalization legislation in New Jersey to include automatic and retroactive expungement.

However, it is important to note that neither the draft bill that has recently been circulated in the media nor the expedited expungement bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Annette Quijano, D-Union, will guarantee automatic and retroactive expungement.

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In its current form, the proposed marijuana legalization legislation only codifies existing expungement law and puts the onus for expungement on people with marijuana convictions, rather than our criminal justice system. And while Quijano’s bill goes a step further by creating a volunteer program for expungement within the Administrative Office of the Courts, it does nothing to defray costs and little to help applicants manage the cumbersome application process.

New Jersey must do better than this. The only way to ensure that automatic and retroactive expungement is instituted for people with marijuana convictions is to establish in the legislation to legalize marijuana an automatic expungement process paid for by tax revenue from adult use marijuana sales and to mandate in the legislation that such expungement would be at no cost to the individual receiving the expungement.

To do otherwise — by leaving reparative justice to the side in the quest for marijuana profits — would only perpetuate existing inequities in our criminal justice system.

Ami Kachalia

Policy Coordinator

Drug Policy Alliance