New Jersey’s alternative treatment centers and their overarching business group the New Jersey Cannabis Trade Association have for months said that they had the product necessary to service both the medical and adult use cannabis markets. Still, the adult use market—at least the above-board market—has yet to make a single sale.
“These delays are totally unacceptable,” said Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-22nd District. “We need to get the legal marijuana market up and running in New Jersey.” – NJ SENATE DEMOCRATS
Now, Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-22nd District, the architect of both the medical and adult use cannabis bills, is looking for explanations.
“These delays are totally unacceptable,” Scutari said in a statement released March 29. “We need to get the legal marijuana market up and running in New Jersey. This has become a failure to follow through on the public mandate and to meet the expectations for new businesses and consumers.”
Two-thirds of New Jerseyans voted “yes” on a ballot initiative paving the way for a legal adult use market in November 2020. Legislative fits and starts ensued in the months that followed, but Gov. Phil Murphy finally signed enacting legislation on Feb. 22 of last year. In the time since, the Cannabis Regulatory Commission established by the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory,
Enforcement Assistance, and Marketplace Modernization Act has crafted and released initial regulations, and at its March 24 public meeting awarded the state’s first 68 conditional licenses to future cannabis business operators.
At the same meeting, CRC Executive Director Jeff Brown said that current operators are about 100,000 pounds short on product to support both the medical and adult-use markets. He said the CRC plans to visit the state’s eight alternative treatment centers in the coming weeks to evaluate whether they can support both customer types.
Deputy director of cannabis industry advocacy organization NJ NORML Nadir Pearson said that he supports the CRC’s delays, noting that “[e]nsuring medical cannabis patients are receiving quality, consistent, and affordable access should be a top priority for New Jersey legislators and existing medical cannabis operators.”
Still, Scutari wants to form a bi-partisan special committee to examine the delays, and he plans to ask the Assembly to participate. Oversight hearings will include an accounting from CRC officials and input from those operating cannabis businesses or waiting to get licensed, as well as others involved in the adult-use cannabis market.
Moving the goalposts?
When enacted, CREAMMA gave the CRC one calendar year to expand New Jersey’s cannabis market to include adult use sales. Under the law, current ATCs can begin selling adult use cannabis when, among other requirements, they demonstrate that they have sufficient inventory to support both the medical and adult use market.
“It was always in there that the ATCs would get a start in the adult use, the question was how much of a head start they were going to get. They’re the ones that are most prepared to start selling, and that’s what people want,” said Fruqan Mouzon, who leads the cannabis practice at McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter LLP. “You can’t have it both ways, you can’t say ‘we want to hurry up and have adult use sales begin,’ and not allow people who are most ready to do it start doing it.”
Two-thirds of New Jerseyans voted “yes” on a ballot initiative paving the way for a legal adult use market in November 2020. – UNSPLASH
On Scutari calling hearings, New Jersey CannaBusiness Association President Edmund Deveaux said, “I don’t think there’s a sitting legislator that’s worked harder at getting cannabis legalized than Senator Scutari, and I absolutely understand his urgency.”
At the same time, Deveaux said, “When we look at timelines, it’s all relative. Five years ago, candidate Murphy talked about legalizing cannabis within his first 100 days as governor. Four years later, the Legislature could not come to agreement on a legalization bill and punted the matter to the voting public. That was 2020. The voting public amends the constitution; in 2021, the Legislature crafts a bill, votes on it, Governor Murphy signs the bill, and it’s not much more than just a year ago that we created a CRC.”
Woven into CREAMMA was an emphasis on giving social equity applicants, or those most affected by the War on Drugs, prominent roles in the new industry. Most of the operational ATCs are multi-state operators based outside of New Jersey, and Deveaux noted that with the delay, “we’re closer to maintaining the legislative intent than we would have been had we flipped the switch on the recreational market a month ago.”
Pearson added that the existing ATCs won’t be able to make up the gap in cannabis supply “fast enough to justify preemptively jumping the line in front of all the Social Equity applicants and diversely-owned applicants who are the only ones being forced to adhere to the CRC’s established requirements.”
The CRC, on the other hand, frames the timeline as not delayed at all, highlighting in an email to NJBIZ the timelines of other states’ adult use market openings. Nine months passed from the time CREAMMA was enacted to when the application portal opened, which is akin to Massachusetts’ timeline. It’s now been 14 months since the law was enacted, and if New Jersey followed Massachusetts’ timeline, nine more months will pass before adult use sales start here.
A representative for Curaleaf, one of the state’s largest and longest-serving ATCs, told NJBIZ via email that the company has tripled its growing capacity since New Jerseyans voted to legalize the adult use market.
“Regulators have repeatedly been telling existing ATCs to ensure they have enough supply to serve the state’s needs and we have abundantly prepared to meet the market’s needs, with over 10 tons of product stored in vaults ready to serve the adult use market. We are 100% ready to serve the New Jersey market,” the spokesperson said.
The special legislative committee’s membership and scheduling of the hearing to address the timeline of adult use cannabis sales will be worked out soon, Scutari said.
