New Jersey Marijuana Sales Officially Top $2 Billion Since 2018, Top Regulator Says, While Encouraging Lawmakers To Explore Home Grow
New Jersey’s top marijuana regulator says the state has officially surpassed $2 billion in medical and recreational marijuana sales since 2018, and he also encouraged lawmakers to explore the possibility of giving medical cannabis patients a home grow option.
Jeff Brown, executive director of the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (NJ-CRC), made the comments during a marijuana-focused hearing before the Assembly Oversight, Reform and Federal Relations Committee on Thursday.
“Today I’m also proud to announce another milestone. Since we started this work in 2018, cumulative sales of both medicinal cannabis and recreational cannabis have eclipsed $2 billion,” Brown said, adding that the “vast majority” of those sales have come over the past two years since New Jersey’s adult-use marijuana market launched.
“But as of as of yesterday at noon, we were about to $2,000,500,000 in total cannabis sales,” he said. “I would love for the CRC to take credit for this, but it’s really the entrepreneurs who have been putting their money, their lives and their dreams on the line to make this happen.”
Brown—who recently predicted that the state will “reach and surpass” a $1 billion annual cannabis sales milestone this year—also responded to a committee member’s question about the current lack of a home grow option for medical marijuana patients.
He started by explaining that cannabis patient registrations have been on the decline, acknowledging that the process to become a patient can be costly and time-intensive and that the emergence of the adult-use market may be contributing to the trend.
With respect to home cultivation, Brown said “that’s not in our purview” to allow as regulators, but that he would “certainly encourage the legislature to look at it and to your due diligence on that.”
“We certainly hear about it all the time and hear from patients all the time that they would like the ability to home grow,” he said. “I know our neighbors in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts all allow home grow. But from where I sit, we don’t have jurisdiction over that. And I would certainly encourage you to look and do due diligence.”
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