It was on Thursday this week that the Garden State’s Senator, Nicholas Scutari, revealed a combined bill that would address not only recreational marijuana but expanding the medical marijuana program in New Jersey.
The newly introduced bill would bring recreational marijuana to the state while expanding the medical marijuana program.
Scutari’s bill calls for 218 total marijuana dispensaries which would include 120 recreational and 98 of them medical.
NJ Advance Media obtained a copy of the legislation that says:
* Municipalities may ban a dispensary from opening within its border, but the local governing body must pass an ordinance doing so within 180 days of the law’s enactment.
* The 7 percent sales tax on medicinal cannabis will be phased-out within three years.
* A dispensary may create a separate “retail marijuana consumption area” on the premises.
* A positive drug test cannot be used as the basis to deny a person medical care, housing or a job “unless failing to do so would put the school, employer, or landlord in violation of federal law or cause it to lose a federal contract or funding.”
