Retired Judge: The Promise and Progress of Social Justice Under New Jersey’s Cannabis Law | Opinion
Landmark legislation was enacted two years ago providing for the legalization and decriminalization of adult-use cannabis in New Jersey. Voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment making the manufacturing, transferring and consumption of cannabis by persons at least 21 years of age legal.
The laws allow for marijuana to be regulated and consumed like alcohol and tobacco. They have an economic development underpinning. Importantly, they also include criminal justice reform and a social equity foundation.
Cannabis and social justice are closely connected. The law aims at repairing past harms resulting from uneven drug-law enforcement in minority communities and creating a more equitable and just approach to cannabis regulation and economic development of the business.
The equity programs seek to ensure that communities adversely impacted by the War on Drugs have a fair opportunity to participate in the legal cannabis industry, but they are moving in slow motion.
New Jersey gets an A for its social equity aspirational goals. But in practice, social equity initiatives providing business opportunities to impacted individuals and communities are facing significant hurdles.
Overregulation, a slow licensing process, limited access to capital and credit, and high costs of doing business are among the reasons cited for the slow progress. Would-be equity entrepreneurs may not have the resources to hire lawyers and professionals, or have the capital, that big companies use to navigate the approval process.
On the other hand, the criminal justice reform component of the law has achieved great success.
For decades, minor marijuana possession arrests led to mass incarceration and criminalization. Often young people, disproportionately from minority communities, were arrested and got a criminal record, with all the negative consequences.
In 2017, close to 38,000 marijuana arrests were made in New Jersey – two-thirds of all arrests by some police departments. According to crime statistics, New Jersey had one of the highest rates of marijuana arrests in the nation.
With each conviction came negative consequences: impacts on jobs, the inability to obtain a driver’s license, the burdensome cost of fines and fees, and often people getting caught in a never-ending cycle of incarceration.