By David Cruz
Correspondent
For a guy who says he’s never consumed cannabis in any form, Sen. Nick Scutari has become the Legislature’s go-to guy on the effort to legalize the weed for adult recreational consumption. This week he reported on his fact-finding mission to Colorado — one of the four states to have legalized recreational cannabis consumption. The senator — who chairs the Judiciary Committee — says he talked with Colorado state officials, lawmakers and law enforcement and toured cannabis shops, talking with retailers and manufacturers.
“The sale and use of marijuana is tightly regulated in Colorado and the regulated industry seems to be working reasonably well,” he reported. “The streets are clean, no one is smoking outside. The dispensaries are contained in storefronts where the product is organized and displayed securely and, really, when you’re walking around, you barely notice they’re there.”
In Scutari’s vision, adults would be able to buy any number of strains of cannabis, almost anywhere in your town, and these shops would be indistinguishable, really, from your local cafe or wine shop. The state, he says, could find better ways to spend the $100 million a year it spends on cannabis-related crime fighting. And, New Jersey could see the birth of a billion dollar industry, almost overnight, with tax revenue of upwards of $300 million a year.
“Who doesn’t want an extra couple of hundred million dollars in the state coffers?” he chuckled. “If someone tells me they don’t want that, then I don’t think they should be in office.”
That someone would be Gov. Chris Christie, who has said repeatedly that he does not support legalization. “I don’t care about the tax money that may come from it, and I don’t care, quite frankly, that people think it’s inevitable,” he said during a recent radio interview. “It’s not inevitable here; I’m not going to permit it, never as long as I’m governor.”
So, a cannabis legalization bill, if passed, would probably end up on the next governor’s desk, and a handful of those would-be governors are generally open to the idea, including Sens. Steve Sweeney and Ray Lesniak, as well as Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop. Yesterday, ambassador Phil Murphy said he was in support. Republican Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick said he supports decriminalization but not legalization.
Scutari says he should have a bill ready in 60 days and will hold hearings in the fall. A recent study by legalization advocates estimated that New Jersey adults illegally consume about 150,000 pounds of cannabis a year and quote polls which say at least half the state’s voters are OK with legalization. With numbers like that, it’s hard to imagine that some lawmakers couldn’t be tempted to put that in their pipes and smoke it.