A few weeks ago, Gov. Phil Murphy met with a group of journalists to talk about the highs and lows of his first year. It didn’t take long for him to reaffirm how high-spirited he still was about his plan to legalize marijuana.

What was striking, however, was Murphy's line of reasoning.

Murphy said one of his primary goals in supporting legislation to decriminalize pot in New Jersey was "the social justice lens."

Simply put, Murphy feels that a disproportionate number of African-American men are arrested in pot busts by police and eventually imprisoned, often with sentences that seem overly cruel. The result is their lives are essentially ruined. Saddled with a criminal record, many cannot land decent jobs or housing.

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By legalizing pot, Murphy believes he would keep large numbers of African-American men out of jail and thereby improve their lives and that of the overall community.

It’s a compelling argument. The facts all show that Murphy is right. Black men are arrested for pot possession at roughly three times the rate for whites, even though studies indicate that the usage rates are virtually the same.

By legalizing pot, Murphy feels he would remove one of the most common factors in arrests of black men. Thus, prisons would no longer be human warehouses for African-Americans. And justice would seem more even-keeled.

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A similar argument was touted recently by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. After he was sworn in for a third term during a ceremony on Ellis Island, Cuomo pledged to reform the state’s ban on pot possession and the use of recreational marijuana. Like Murphy, Cuomo cited the “justice” factor as a key reason behind his support for legalized marijuana.

This sort of social experimentation may actually work. Certainly, justice and fairness demands America should address the fact that three African-American men are arrested for pot possession for every white man.

But for all these good intentions, let’s peel back some of this idealism justice and look at another factor that is also involved in the movement to legalize pot.

Yep, that would be the Almighty dollar. Money. Profits.

And in the mind of Phil Murphy, all those greenbacks from pot sales translate into new tax revenues.

That's the plan anyway.

Framed in a message of social justice, which appealed to progressives, the Murphy administration and well-financed lobbyists representing the nation's marijuana industry also have put forth a message that would also appeal to middle-class taxpayers – namely, that he thought he had found a new revenue stream to bolster the state’s coffers.

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This was the promise of legalized marijuana. And the projections were stunning.

As Murphy touted a plan to legalize marijuana during his campaign to an easy election victory in the fall of 2017, some economists projected that New Jersey could expect to take in between $300 million and $500 million in new tax revenues merely by legalizing pot and imposing a hefty tax on growers, processors, retailers and those who delivered it.

As quickly as you could say, “give me another toke,” those projections were jettisoned in favor of even more grandiose estimates of all the greenbacks that would roll into Trenton.

My favorite was one that came from a law firm that just happened to have two lawyers on Murphy’s health care transition committee. Based on an estimate of taxes collected from licensing and franchise fees for pot growers, suppliers and retailers, the firm said New Jersey could take in $1 billion in new tax revenues.

That’s essentially the equivalent of raising the sales tax a half-cent. Or to put it differently, the state would not have to raise the sales tax in order to reap an extra billion dollars.

With Murphy touting other plans to give free tuition to students at community colleges, a billion could go a long way. Or in the case of all those community college kids, the more they smoked pot, the more money the state would have to pay their tuition.

Do you see where this is leading?

The grand social experience in justice had suddenly morphed into a grand experiment in economics and tax revenues that seemed grounded in old-fashioned puffery, with maybe a dash of hucksterism.

But now we come to the end of Murphy’s first year as governor. And we have yet another estimate of how much money the state might eventually receive if the Legislature ever gets around to legalizing pot.

You might want to sit down for this one. Or if you are able, take a puff on a mind-altering substance.

A recent report by the Office of Legislative Services, the nonpartisan Statehouse agency that assists with crafting and studying new laws, estimates that New Jersey would bring in only $210 million in state taxes if pot is legalized.

That’s not exactly chump change. New Jersey can always use an extra $210 million – just to repair all the potholes.

But when you study the fine print, you realize that the estimate by the Office of Legislative Services is based on another estimate – namely, that nearly $1.8 billion in legalized pot would actually be sold throughout New Jersey.

Yet another factor is the possibility – raised by pot advocates – that a high tax on marijuana would cause buyers to simply bypass state-sanctioned sellers and turn to the usual, time-honored tradition of buying pot illegally, underground.

This possibility has resulted in a serious debate in Trenton on how much to tax legal pot. One early proposal called for a paltry 7 percent tax, with a gradual increase to 25 percent over five years. Compare this to Colorado, where legalized pot is taxed at about 33 percent and Washington State, where the pot tax is 37 percent.

In early December, a state legislative committee voted to advance a bill calling for legalized pot in New Jersey. But as written, the bill specified that pot would only be taxed at a 12 percent rate – the lowest in the nation.

When you dissect the 12 percent figure, the breakdown is not exactly the harbinger of a revenue windfall. Roughly 6.6 percent of that tax would be the state’s standard sales tax that consumers pay on just about everything they purchase in New Jersey. The special pot tax would amount to only 5.3 percent, along with a possible extra 2 percent tax that towns could impose on locally sanctioned pot stores.

The point here is that pot sales may not be the economic windfall that proponents predicted.

When it comes to marijuana, there is still too much smoke.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com