Lawmakers send measures to Murphy after heated on-line debate

By Sam Wood STAFF WRITER, Philadelphia Inquirer

New Jersey legislators approved three bills Thursday that radically change how the state approaches drug use involving marijuana.

The state’s Senate and Assembly voted first to create a new and legal marijuana industry from scratch and called for new regulations to be written within six months.

Both houses also approved a bill that decriminalizes possession of up to six ounces of cannabis. That second bill is designed to stop arrests and expunge criminal records of low-level marijuana offenses.

The third bill, meanwhile, will reduce penalties for possessing psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, from a felony charge to a disorderly persons offense.

“This is an historic day, the culmination of years of work,” said Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, on the vote to legalize marijuana for all adults. “The decriminalization bill is among the most progressive in the country.”

Gov. Phil Murphy, who campaigned on a platform to legalize marijuana, is expected sign the bills into law as soon as next week.

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Voters on Nov. 3 overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in the Garden State for all adults.

New Jersey is expected to save about $127 million per year on enforcement costs with the expected enactment of the new laws. None of the bills, however, addresses home cultivation of marijuana. Growing weed without a state-issued permit still can result in felony charges for gardeners or basement growers.

Though the bills passed with significant margins, some lawmakers in the Senate assailed the lack of measures in the bills to ensure greater social justice and reparations, while others said the measures were laden with too many regulations and taxes.

The session, held on a conference call because of the COVID-19 pandemic and several inches of snow on the ground, erupted at one point into a squall of insults and recriminations.

State Sen. Ronald L. Rice (D., Newark), who opposed the bill, angrily rebuked its sponsor, State Sen. Nick Scutari (D., Linden), for not including stronger social justice measures in the proposed law. The attack provoked a furious rebuttal from Scutari. As the two lawmakers yelled at each other over the phone lines, Senate President Steve Sweeney (D., Gloucester) threatened to mute both of the warring lawmakers.

“I’m the one who’s legalizing it so Black and brown people don’t get arrested and he’s hollering at me?” said Scutari, minutes after the historic vote. “He’s lucky I’m not Donald Trump. I’d have called him a loser.”

A study produced by the ACLU of New Jersey found Black and brown people were over three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana crimes than white people, even though they consume cannabis at similar rates.

Scutari, who also serves as a full-time Linden County prosecutor, called passage of the legalization the “greatest achievement of a career’s worth of work.”

“People now have the opportunity to get jobs and go to college who might not have been able to because they’d been arrested for marijuana in their younger years,” Scutari said. “It’s a significant accomplishment for New Jersey and is likely the most significant piece of legislation we’ve passed in my lifetime.”

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