Despite the delayed launch of New Jersey’s much-anticipated adult-use cannabis market, the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission (CRC) held a public hearing this week to get input on the best way to spend the tax revenue generated from adult-use sales.
Fifteen people attended the March 2 virtual hearing and floated all kinds of ideas, including using the funds for expungement clinics, school buses, wheelchair ramps, cannabis community centers, training for entrepreneurs, grants and no-interest loans, the New Jersey Monitor reported.
“Funding for law enforcement under the guise of community reinvestment is not what we are looking for,” Ami Kachalia, a campaign strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, told the commission, according to the news outlet. “We want real community reinvestment that supports the kinds of needs—things like social services and harm reduction and educational support and economic development—that truly increase access to opportunity for New Jerseyans and help communities thrive.”
New Jersey voters approved an adult-use cannabis legalization measure in the November 2020 election, and Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation last year to set up a regulated market in the state.
Within that law is language that earmarks 70% of adult-use cannabis tax revenue for “social equity investments” in “impact zones,” or socially and economically disadvantaged communities most impacted by prohibition, according to the New Jersey Monitor.
The March 2 hearing was the first of three to offer New Jersey residents a say in how this tax revenue can be used to improve their communities, the news outlet reported. The next two hearings will take place the next two Wednesdays, on March 9 and March 16.
Meanwhile, it is unclear when New Jersey’s commercial adult-use cannabis market will launch. The state missed a self-imposed Feb. 22 deadline last month to open its first dispensaries, although Murphy said during his radio show on WBGO in Newark that sales will begin “within weeks."
