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A new legal weed bill became public on Tuesday after weeks of work by several state lawmakers.

The plan, first reported by NJ Advance Media, calls for marijuana delivery and smoking lounges, and also suggests a marijuana tax that would be the lowest in the country. The lawmakers have presented the bill to Gov. Phil Murphy and are now awaiting feedback.

But as eager as the governor and these legislators are to get legal weed done -- and some are still hoping the bill can be introduced this month -- several key issues still need to be worked out, likely pushing legalization into the fall.

A source close to the bill negotiations, who asked not to be identified over fears that it would hurt discussions, said Tuesday that a hearing on the bill in the Legislature on Sept. 27 is still a possibility and that the group of lawmakers expect to meet with Murphy's team later this week.

The lawmakers have long expected to make minor tweaks to the bill based on Murphy's feedback before introduction, but some of those tweaks may not be so minor.

A report from Politico New Jersey this week suggests that Murphy is unhappy with the 10 percent tax presented in the legalization bill, which would be the lowest marijuana tax in the country.

Murphy on Tuesday tried to distance himself from that report, saying that his administration hasn't made up its mind about marijuana taxes.

"We typically don't talk about legislation while they're getting baked," the governor said. "We're not ruling anything out. We want to get it right."

Murphy had previously called for a higher tax on marijuana, which suggests that taxes could be one of the first points of contention when the governor speaks with legislators.

Other sticking points, based on multiple interviews with several people close to the debate, could include industry oversight and expungements, the latter of which wasn't fully addressed in the new bill.

Jamel Holley, D-Union, one of the assemblymen working on the bill, said to expect language on expungements in the final version of the bill, and added that a separate bill on expungements is also in the works and is expected to go alongside the legalization bill.

Expungements -- the wiping away of certain criminal convictions, in this case marijuana-related ones -- are a key piece of Murphy's social justice platform as it relates to legal weed. They are also seen as crucial to getting the votes needed to legalize weed.

So with a few key issues still to be negotiated, it's unclear if lawmakers and the governor can reach a consensus by the end of the month. However, legislative leaders have made it clear that legal weed will be a priority this fall.

But if marijuana is legalized in New Jersey, it would still take several months to get the commercial industry up and running.

The bill says regulators would have 180 days to adopt rules for the program. After the rules are adopted, regulators must start accepting applications for licenses within 30 days, and approving or denying those applications within an additional 30 days.





Regulators then would be required to issue licenses 30 days after approval. Once a cultivation business has its license, it would be free to start growing marijuana, but it would take a few months to harvest the plants.



It's probably safe to say that if this bill passes, it would take about a year to get the marijuana industry up and running, and at this point it's not clear when that year-long countdown would begin.

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Payton Guion may be reached at PGuion@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @PaytonGuion. Find NJ.com on Facebook.