New Jersey Holds Hearing on Legalizing Marijuana

New Jersey Sen. Nicholas Scutari is holding a hearing today on his bill that would legalize marijuana for those 21 and older in the Garden State.

It’s not often that Philadelphians are concerned with the goings on of the New Jersey legislature. But a hearing in Trenton today will be of much interest to many Philadelphians — and, indeed, anyone living near Pennsylvania’s border with the Garden State. N.J. Sen. Nicholas Scutari is holding a hearing today about legalizing recreational marijuana.

Last March, Scutari introduced a bill (below) that would legalize recreational marijuana in New Jersey.

“A journey of a thousand steps starts with the first,” Scutari told NJ.com. “The first step was introducing the bill and this is the natural next step — to talk about the benefits of legalization and the negative impact prohibition has had.” He says opponents of marijuana legalization will get their say in a future hearing.

Scutari, the Democratic head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, does have an uphill battle. One of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie‘s platforms in his presidential bid is a crackdown on marijuana, which he says is a “gateway drug,” and he opposes legalization in the state.

He’s called medical marijuana programs a “front for legalization” — to be fair, this is more accurate than his “gateway drug” comment — and has clashed with supporters of medical marijuana on the campaign trail. The medical marijuana rollout in Jersey has been slower and more restricted than supporters had hoped.

The Daily Record newspaper editorialized in favor of the bill, while the Courier News expressed support for decriminalization instead.

“The criminalization of marijuana is costly, unfair and compromises public safety,” Drug Policy Alliance New Jersey state director Roseanne Scotti said in a statement. “New Jersey wastes more than $125 million dollars a year arresting people for marijuana possession. This absurd policy criminalizes otherwise law-abiding citizens and wastes law enforcement resources that would be better spent on serious public safety issues.”

Scutari, who represents District 22 (parts of Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties) in North Jersey, also told NJ.com that opponents to his legalization bill offer “shallow arguments” against it. His bill would allow N.J. municipalities to ban or regulate the sale of marijuana. (So, there wouldn’t be marijuana dispensaries in Ocean City, but there probably would in Atlantic City.)

The bill would direct the money made in taxes and licensing from pot sales to women’s health programs (10 percent), drug enforcement and prevention efforts (20 percent) and the flagging New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Account (70 percent). Users would need to be 21 to legally buy and use marijuana.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law, but the Department of Justice issued a memorandum to U.S. attorneys in 2013 that essentially said states that legalized marijuana would be left alone, as long as they adopted a strict regulatory framework. Possession of marijuana legally purchased in one state is illegal in another; hypothetically, it would be illegal to buy marijuana in New Jersey and bring it into Pennsylvania (unless Pa. changes its laws).

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