Dozens Of New Jersey Marijuana Businesses Push To Legalize Home Cultivation, Despite Resistance From Governor And Legislative Leaders
Dozens of New Jersey small marijuana businesses and advocacy groups are calling on the state legislature to allow adults to cultivate their own cannabis at home—seemingly contradicting repeated claims from the governor and legislative leaders that the reform could undermine the evolving legal marketplace.
And as Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is set to term out at the end of the year, activists are drawing attention where his potential successors stand on the issue as well.
The more than 50 businesses and advocates, which formed a collective known as the New Jersey Home Grow Coalition last year, signed an open letter to Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D), rejecting the idea that the market needs more time to mature before people can be permitted to grow their own plants for personal use.
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Unlike most other states that have enacted cannabis legalization, New Jersey continues to prohibit home cultivation for adults or medical marijuana patients.
“Even with our growing industry there’s no hope of access to the clean, consistent, strain-specific medicine that I need for my epilepsy,” Andrea Raible, co-founder of the NJ Homegrow Coalition, said in a press release. “Politicians are concerned with adult use profits while we are concerned with life threatening health conditions and facing prison for plants.”
In the open letter to Scutari, who has broadly championed cannabis reform but has recently resisted calls for home cultivation, the members of the New Jersey marijuana community said “discussions on home cultivation in New Jersey have stalled, attributed to allowing the industry ‘time to mature.'”
“As licensed cannabis operators, stakeholders in the industry, and relevant organizations, we respectfully disagree with this statement. The legalization of medical home cultivation will not negatively impact the legal state cannabis industry,” they said. “We firmly support the immediate legalization of medical home cultivation for patients and caregivers. We also endorse additional legislation to be introduced that allows for the legalization of personal use home cultivation safely and equitably.”
The advocates and stakeholders are voicing support for an amendment to expand a pair of bills seeking to provide for medical cannabis home cultivation, making it so the plant limit would be replaced with an allowance to “allow up to 100 square feet of mature cannabis plant grow canopy area.”
“This would allow patients and caretakers to have the ability to properly pheno-hunt and cultivate an amount that meets individual needs,” they said. “Additionally, this change would mitigate the potential for exploiting the law through the cultivation of massive cannabis plants.”
“We implore the legislature to bring S1393/A846 to the committee and consider medical home cultivation for a vote as soon as possible to minimize the ongoing impact on medical cannabis patients,” the letter says, referring to pending legislation to legalize home grow for patients.
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“We also endorse additional legislation to be introduced that allows for the legalization of personal use home cultivation safely and equitably,” the letter says.
Chris Goldstein, an organizer with NORML who received a presidential pardon certificate under the Biden administration after being formally forgiven for a 2014 cannabis possession case, told Marijuana Moment that New Jersey lawmakers “have been working with large, multi-state medical cannabis corporations for over a decade.”
“Every year new laws are passed with bipartisan support to support the local industry; everything from generous tax breaks to easing ethics rules,” he said. “It’s time for the legislative leadership to lift the blockade on home cultivation bills and begin public hearings.”
While there seems to be growing support for allowing a home grow option under New Jersey’s marijuana laws, including within the small cannabis industry community, there’s been continued resistance from the governor and key lawmakers.
Murphy said in late 2023 that he remains “very much open-minded” about the idea of adding a home grow option to the state’s marijuana law—but he still wants to give the licensed industry more time to mature before implementing that change.
“I’m very much open-minded to this. I would bet—if I were a betting man—that down the road that that’s exactly where this would land,” he said. “I understand, having said that, why wasn’t in our initial regs, because I think there’s a rightful objective to get this industry up on its feet and make sure that the folks who are in this as a matter of commerce are successful and, again, with a huge amount of focus on equity.”