New NJ legal weed bills are unveiled, and voting starts Monday

Nicholas Pugliese | Trenton Bureau

After months of delays and strained negotiations, New Jersey lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled the bills they hope will legalize marijuana for recreational use, expand the state's medical marijuana program and overhaul the rules for expunging drug-related and other violations.

Votes in legislative committees are scheduled for Monday, with votes by the full Senate and Assembly possible in December. If the bills are approved and then signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who supports legalization, New Jersey would become the 11th state to allow adults to possess and use small amounts of marijuana, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But hurdles remain. It's unclear whether enough lawmakers support the measures for them to pass, and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said voting will begin despite lingering disagreements with the governor.

"I don’t think we’re on the same page with the administration," Sweeney said Wednesday, although he added that the two sides are "98 percent" there.

"We’ve talked about this for too long, and we’re ready to start the process," he said.

A spokesman for the governor declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, said discussions with the governor are ongoing.

"The speaker is confident the bill will pass when it is posted for a vote in the full Assembly," Liza Acevedo, the spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Murphy and Democratic leaders in the Legislature have been at odds for months over the tax rate for legal marijuana and other aspects of how to regulate the new industry, repeatedly missing self-imposed deadlines for action. Emboldened by the impasse, opponents of legalization have made inroads with local officials; nearly 40 municipalities have either banned marijuana businesses or officially voiced their opposition to legalization efforts.

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The new bills could have wide-ranging effects on New Jersey's culture, as well as its health care and criminal justice systems.

The legislation to legalize recreational marijuana, S-2703, would allow adults who are 21 or older to possess up to an ounce of cannabis or its equivalent in other forms, such as liquid or concentrate. Use of marijuana in public places would be limited in a similar way to smoking cigarettes, with smoking in special areas and designated hotel rooms. Growing marijuana at home would be prohibited.

Sales of the drug would be taxed by the state at 12 percent, plus up to 2 percent by municipalities. Murphy has sought a 25 percent tax rate, but Sweeney has insisted on a lower rate to try to snuff out illegal sales.

People who have been charged with or convicted of violations made legal by the bill would be able to apply to have those offenses expunged, or wiped from their records. The bill directs court personnel to assist with expungement applications and calls for the launch of a statewide electronic filing system and public awareness campaign.

New Jersey would expand its medical marijuana program under a second bill, S-10, by increasing the monthly medical marijuana cap to 3 ounces per patient from 2 ounces, allowing adults to purchase edible forms of cannabis and allowing patients to visit any medical marijuana dispensary in the state as opposed to limiting them to the one where they are registered.

It also requires a newly created Cannabis Regulatory Commission to process applications for new medical marijuana dispensaries, manufacturers and cultivators within 90 days; it does not set a target for new approvals.

Unlike an earlier proposal to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for any medical condition, the bill continues to allow prescriptions only for a list of qualifying conditions, ranging from seizure disorder and cancer to anxiety, migraines and chronic pain.

A third bill, S-3205, would greatly expand what crimes are eligible under New Jersey's expungement laws, which have been criticized as overly strict compared with those in other states.

State law currently limits how many offenses can be expunged and requires offenders to wait six years from the completion of jail time, parole or other court-imposed requirements until they can apply to clear their records. The bill would reduce the wait time to five years for some people and allow them to expunge more crimes.

The bill also creates an alternative "clean slate" expungement process by which people who have a clean record for 10 years can seek to have all their eligible offenses erased. Eligible offenses would now include crimes involving controlled dangerous substances but not a long list of other offenses, such as murder, sexual assault and perjury.

Passage of marijuana legalization seemed all but certain when Murphy took office in January after months of selling it on the campaign trail as a matter of social justice. Key lawmakers had yet to weigh in, but public polls showed most New Jersey residents were on Murphy’s side. Talk of buying pot legally became a matter of when, not if.

Since then, however, it’s been a bumpy road for legalization proponents. Public opinion is still on their side — 58 percent of residents support adult-use marijuana, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released last month — but opposition has been loud and varied, from law enforcement officials concerned about how to test for marijuana impairment to lawmakers worried that an uptick in marijuana use would hurt minority communities and tarnish the image of family-friendly shore towns.

All the while, Murphy and pro-legalization Democrats have been unable to hash out a final agreement. Both sides have been tight-lipped about the full extent of their disputes, but the tax rate and whether a new commission should oversee the industry are known to be sticking points.

In their bill to legalize recreational marijuana, lawmakers proposed creating a five-member Cannabis Regulatory Commission to regulate the production and sale of marijuana, oversee licensing, investigate violations and adopt further rules for the industry. The commission also would be charged with promoting small marijuana operations called "microbusinesses" and other outfits run by minorities, women and disabled veterans.

Sweeney said tweaks to all three bills are possible before Monday, although they are "pretty much complete."

But Sweeney said he still needs to cobble together enough votes to advance the bills through the Senate. As he has done previously, Sweeney urged Murphy on Wednesday to do more to secure the support of on-the-fence lawmakers.

"I’ve said before that if the governor’s not going to help with votes, well, I don’t know where we go," he said.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com