Legal pot in 100 days? New Jersey's next governor aims for national first | Hacker News Reader

Legal pot in 100 days? New Jersey's next governor aims for national first

washingtonexaminer.com

123 pointsnotscj64 comments

It looks very unlikely the anti-drug brigade is going to be able to stop the spread of this nationally at this point. I think NJ will make nine legal states, more will legalize at a faster clip. The Trump Administration appears to be coasting (neither helping nor meaningfully hindering) as far as legalization is concerned, and the Republicans look set to drop the Senate (even despite the up-for-election imbalance).

It's going to accomplish a ton of things simultaneously.

- Substantially reduce arrests, prison sentences, and our general prison / jail population over time.

- Provide another good option for pain management to millions of people. Something we desperately need right now.

- Reduce general crime.

- Weaken the cartels.

- Increase tax revenue and employment by normalizing an industry worth tens of billions annually. The US should eventually become a major marijuana exporter as many other countries gradually legalize.

- Break the back of the war on drugs and change the culture more broadly (this is already well underway, as so many middle class voters are seeing the vast destruction of the opioid crisis, which is educating people on needing to treat addiction as a health problem while simultaneously demonstrating how relatively safe marijuana is by comparison).

Interesting points, especially about the culture change. I really hope that with the legalization, there is going to be a push for better education about marijuana. Right now broadly speaking it's pretty binary, "pot is a gateway drug, etc" and "weed can do no harm". I'm a regular user myself, and have some understanding of the associated risks. So I think we might see a small but non trivial increase psychiatric disorders in young men in particular after legalization. Cannabis is already considered a risk factor if you have schizophrenia in your family [0].

The other thing I'm concerned about, besides the psychoactive effects, is lung health. Anecdotally the smoke doesn't seem as bad as cigarette, but regular (non oral) use can't be great for your lungs, pulmonary disorders are nothing to mess with.

Either way legalization should be lead us to a better world - I just can't wait for research to become easier so we can get some more concrete answers.

0. https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article-abstract/26/13/2462/357...

> Right now broadly speaking it's pretty binary, "pot is a gateway drug, etc" and "weed can do no harm".

My retired police officer/taxi-driver friend once commented on smelling some "really good weed" on some of his passengers. I replied about how in his former life he used to fight in the war on that plant.

"They told me it was a gateway drug, and I believed them. Now it seems the plant actually has health benefits."

That post was titled Ordinary Rendition: http://www.taxiwars.org/2017/10/ordinary-rendition-public-se...

Sessions made a ton of noise about cracking down on recreational AND medicinal cannabis, but so far has done absolutely nothing. And now that he's facing his own problems, likely the end result will be.. nothing.

It's been 20 years now since the first medical-marijuana law passed, and it'll probably take another twenty years to finish filling in all the gaps, but it does feel like we've turned the corner on nationwide legalization.

And yet... marijuana is just one drug. How are we going to win the rest of the drug war? We can't afford to fight this battle one drug at a time; it'd take centuries. There are a vast array of interesting illegal psychedelics which are neither popular enough for the citizen-initiative process nor well-studied enough for the "dip your toes in by allowing medical use" two-step. I'd love to find some way we can use the momentum we're gaining from the legalization of marijuana to break down the entire Controlled Substances Act.

I hope the bill that gets passed allows for home cultivation. Previous versions did not, and it would be a shame if business interests were able to monopolize the supply chain in the state.

NJ resident and I believe that's still the case. I'm planning on writing my assemblypeople and the governor's office come January.

But then we'll likely wind up with people using less opioids and 25% fewer deaths due to opioid overdose like we've seen elsewhere and won't someone think of the poor pharmaceutical companies? /s

For context, there was a study published three weeks ago observing that opioid overdoes fatalities are down in Colorado since they legalized recreational marijuana:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/16/legal...

ER Visits for Kids Rise Significantly After Pot Legalized in Colorado

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/er-visits-kids-ri...

Nope, ER visits involving marijuana use went up for 13- to 21. But, frankly so did usage and 18-21 is not exactly children plus people are less likely to seek treatment after illegal activity, so that's a non story.

Overall ER visits where unchanged.

There was a fair amount of improper labeling, improper storage instructions for new time users, and improper understanding that edibles may be extremely potent and slower acting and can actually get you a lot higher than you might intend (vs smoking where the onset is basically instant and easier to control for).

The industry has made progress in labeling, in better indicating dosages, and in maybe avoiding certain form factors or ensuring proper packaging so that the product cannot be easily mistaken for candy.

But the amazing thing is that even with some significant mistakes / shortcomings in this area in almost all cases the result of accidental ingestion or over-consumption is basically just a matter of sleeping it off.

Has there been any studies on this?

I'm under the impression that opoids are much stronger than cannabis, would people who take them be able to wean off them onto cannabis based products?

Opioids are absolutely stronger. Marijuana provides a previously unavailable mid-tier level of pain control where a lot of people who didn't want to be taking opioids now have a better option.

I agree, worth studying, but probably difficult to compare across the board. You'd probably need to identify groups with the same kind of pain and study those individual groups. But right now, is there all that much on the market between opioids and NSAIDs? Cannabis would at least provide an additional method of action, and maybe they go with what works best for the specific pain or patient.

If they can make it happen might as well raise toll rates too. I could see a lot of "day visitors" streaming in from NYC and Philadelphia

Why not just heavily tax marijuana? That seems like a more reasonable and targeted way to raise money from this change.

Because if you "heavily tax" cannabis, it will expand or prop up the already existing black market. This is something that towns, eager to tax recreational cannabis shops exorbitant amounts, will soon realize.

hopefully sooner rather than later.

when we said "regulate and tax it" for decades, we didn't mean give the blackmarket a greater marketshare by making the taxes exorbitant.

People are going to buy weed, if the taxes make it not worth purchasing legally the blackmarket will always be there to undercut it.

you have to COMPETE with blackmarket prices, you can't just jack up prices, legalize it and then expect people to stop paying $25 for 3.5 grams of top-tier marijuana.

no one is going to continually pay $75 for 3.5 grams, especially after the novelty has worn off.

If you have a who buddy will sell you the same amount of equal or higher quality for a 1/3rd of the price, would you pay 2/3rds more?

If cities add more tax on top of state tax, then it'll push more medical and recreational users right back into the untaxed newly formed gray market. Same with cities who don't open shops.

I think this is a result of being blinded by dollar signs instead of practical and thought-through policy.

Yes, it'll still rake in tax dollars and yes, people who don't know any better will buy from shops, like tourists.

But for the target market? I'm not so sure.

What sort of black markets currently exist to evade taxation for consumer goods currently, that threaten the existence of that legalized and taxed industry? The only thing I can think of is cigarettes, and even then, the taxation is extremely high and the legal market is still very strong. I don't think that high taxation is going to derail a legal market, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

> What sort of black markets currently exist to evade taxation for consumer goods currently

I don't know about the US, but in Australia where cigarettes are heavily taxed (one packet of cigarettes can go for AUD$30) there's a small but pretty active market for imported untaxed cigarettes.

sorry, I didn't mean to imply it would derail or threaten the existence of it. Like I said, money is going to be made by the state hand over fist just from tourism.

But for your regular person who's made due without a legal marijuana distribution network isn't going to start paying a premium on the regular for the privilege of retail. It's mostly a novelty, IMO, and may increase graymarket demand for untaxed marijuana for everyone BUT the people looking to do some weed tourism, etc.

That's exactly why they don't want to legalize home cultivation. In Mass the back market is booming because everyone can grow it.

The law in Mass, and how it's rolled out has had unintended consequences:

1. Home cultivation is legal (and not controlled by local officials), and therefore the "black" market is booming / prices are dropping.

2. Municipalities are blocking recreational cannabis businesses, in many cases instituting "moratoriums" for 1-2 years to "allow the state legal framework to be hammered out" (which is complete BS) This helps the black market further.

3. Furthermore, the shops that are allowed are heavily regulated and taxed, further helping the black market price advantage.

Until recreational cannabis businesses are open and thriving, the black market will continue to surge, and probably hasn't even peaked.

Definitely, especially over the Delaware, where the DRPA will totally share that revenue and not squander it one bit.

Yup. Raise the tolls. Make some high priced toll only lanes while you're at it. God forbid people prefer to sit in traffic on a bridge in order to spend their money in your state. Regressive taxation is always a net win for society.

(the massive amount of sarcasm should be obvious)

Seriously, other than a few extra dollars in the short term and making the roads less crowded for those who have the money to justify their value proposition what is the befit of raising tolls?

I can understand if you want to basically levy a tax on tourism but levying a tax on people showing up to buy stuff doesn't seem smart.

>I can understand if you want to basically levy a tax on tourism but levying a tax on people showing up to buy stuff doesn't seem smart.

You mean, like a sales tax?

I live near a border town with a no sales tax state. The comparable town on the no tax side of the line has seen increased growth for the 20 years I've been shopping here. The town on my side of the line just opened it's 18th empty storefront on the two main roads I town. It's not the sales tax that kills the town, it's the close neighbor without it.

Obviously it's not just sales tax. The real estate on my town is owned almost entirely by two people. One with a lucrative housing contract with the prisons re-integration program. A great idea but not when captured by cronyism.

Well, rich people may buy higher quality, but they don't buy proportionate to what average and lower classes spend. The rich invest in tax shelters and other vehicles to make more money.

So it ends up that tax hurts the poor a hell of a lot worse than the rich. And the fact that 7% of someone who is "poor" is a hell of a hit on the low wage they already get (and taxed on).

35% on labor tax, but only 18% on investments. I'm pretty sure Warren Buffet came out on that talking point a while back.

Yes, like a sales tax. That is an extremely regressive tax and should be removed.

I think whether or not it is regressive depends on the context.

A flat tax (perhaps an even steeper on than generally exists currently) on goods purchased might help to curb consumption/consumerism that is destroying our environment. That's one context. How should a government tasked with regulating commerce seek to fund such endeavors otherwise? I'm not baiting; I really don't know.

Maybe they can fix the roads with the money they charge ? Also, by adding a cost to go on they would limit traffic.

Kind of like how tolls on the MA portion of I-90 were only supposed to last until the initial construction was paid off?

As a NJ resident, I've been curious to see what the next Governor would do to fix the broke state's budget. Interesting this article doesn't discuss the economic benefit that would result from it. Right now state & local taxes are just being raised each year instead.

There are probably diminishing returns to legalization + taxation as novelty wears off and neighboring states follow suit.

How would neighboring states' follow-on legalization diminish tax returns over time? Washington has posted $280 million in tax revenues so far, and Oregon $85 million. Neither seems to threaten the other -- demand is pretty much ubiquitous.

The largest grossing pot store in WA state, prior to legalization in OR, wasn't in the states largest city of Seattle. It was located in Vancouver, just a few miles from Portland.

There is definitely a benefit to being the first mover in a region. You are correct that states will still see significant tax revenues and jobs that persist.

Right, because Seattle probably had lots of smaller neighborhood shops, whereas the "destination" shops in Vancouver were likely bigger and closer to the freeway.

Not that Vancouver doesn't have a decently-sized population in its own right, but it only stands to reason that the smaller city would have fewer, busier shops serving tourists from across the river.

Seattle didn't though, largely because licensing was completely bottlenecked. The city itself took a while to permit more than a handful of shops. I don't know the numbers, but given that Seattle is a bigger city than Portland, I wonder what the data normalized to shops per capita - hypothetically considering Vancouver to be part of Portland, as it probably would be if there wasn't a state line in the way!

Ah, I didn't realize that. I've been away for a number of years, and on my last visit, there were already quite a few.

I'm not a Seattle resident, so I could be way off, but it was something I went out of my way to observe. We were spending a week every summer in Seattle, and Washington had legalized while my home state of Maine was debating it. I remember in 2015, licensing was still an issue in Seattle and there were like ~3 dispensaries in the city, none of them downtown. I think there was one down in the ID, one a bit north, but nothing centrally located. Then in 2016 there were at least a couple that popped up closer in.

I tend to think that cannabis is pretty harmless for adults and I voted for legalization in Maine, but I'm okay with a slow rollout. There's a whole generation of folks out there that think the stuff makes you crazy, so there's some benefit to slow uptake.

If NJ doesn't require a NJ ID in order to buy in-state, the differences are huge. NJ is in a much denser area than Washington, Oregon, or Colorado.

Boston, DC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all reasonable drives away and NYC is right next door.

It would be quite ironic for NJ to pass it, and watch my NYC friends who said they would "never visit Jersey" all the sudden find a reason to come...

Boston, DC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all reasonable drives away and NYC is right next door.

not to nitpick, but Philadelphia is just as close as NYC (maybe even closer) I routinely joke that Philadelphia and NYC are part of New Jersey, usually to upset citizens of said cities. Then I point out that the culture in those cities is much more like NJ than the rest of their own states.

I grew up in NJ - I'd do the same thing to rile people up, but deep down I knew: South Jersey is part of Philly, and anything north of Mercer Co is basically NY. Except for the shore counties - they hate all of us equally. So I consider them to be New Yorkers out of spite.

Most of the "hate" is just as superficial as programmers teasing people that use other languages, or sysadmins trash talking other operating systems. I can see the Walt Whitman bridge from the end of my road, and I have made friends with plenty of people from North, and Central Jersey.

...Another fun one is to pretend that Central Jersey doesn't exist, or to claim to be a proud Shoobie (or Benny) to the shore people :-)

Totally. Jersey Pride is actually a unifying force. Kind of like how we all pretend to not like Seaside and Wildwood.

I know the Netherlands has had issues with drug tourism after their legalization efforts. I wonder if Jersey won't have similar issues. Other states that have legalized have been protected from this by geography, but Jersey City is smack in the middle of a gigantic greater metropolitan area and mass transit system that spans multiple states.

But the plan is to delay actual legalization till 2019 (the Gov just wants the legislation passed in his first 100 days), so presumably they're conscious that legalization will bring about a bunch of logistic issues like this that need to be worked out.

Amsterdam and Jersey City aren't really similarly situated. Drug tourism comes with some problems, and if you can get beautiful canals, the Dutch Masters, and Anne Frank House tourists instead you'd much prefer those. But if that's not an option drug tourism is probably better than nothing. If not to JC, which is gentrifying rapidly, then certainly to Newark which is just a couple of stops further on the PATH.

This is what a lot of people miss. There isn’t much of a “honeymoon” period to cannabis legalization. There’s already a LOT of people consuming illegally right now. They will buy it through legal means in due time. They will still continue consuming. And there’s a LOT of users. It’s a pretty well established, stable market once the customer starts buying.

Legality aside, it would seem pointless to drive to another state to purchase a similar product for marginally less money than available to you locally.

Many cannabis products aren't possible to produce without a legal framework.

Say you want a consistently dosed 5mg edible. Does your state have a robust cannabis oil extraction and distillation infrastructure? Does it have rapid, reliable testing to quantify dosage? Probably not.

Maybe you prefer a live resin extract produced from fresh cut flower. You need to have refrigerated trucks in the field when you harvest, a -20C refrigerated room for product storage, and a processing lab. This kind of product is highly sought after but rare in the black market.

There's as much depth to the cannabis industry as there is to alcohol, tobacco, or food. It just wasn't clear to people when all they could purchase was the equivalent of moonshine.

New Jersey does have the country's only coca leaf processor. They know how to handle shipments and regulation of controlled substances.

People do it all the time. The NH state liquor stores do an incredible amount of out-of-state business. And even more more mundane purchases, the arbitrage in sales tax is significant enough that many people plan around trips to NH to buy bigger-ticket items.

http://wealthalchemyblog.com/2012/10/taxes-matter-14-cross-b...

That was a great article, I knew states competed in attracting businesses, I didn’t realize retail competition would be so large as well.

It helps when a state border is a day trip drive away from a major metro area.

This is not just the sale. There is a whole industry behind pot.

I know lawyers, architects, energy managers, etc working now in the weed industry. It is big business.

This transcendes simply sales. And NJ would be regional leader.

And perhaps reduce some prison costs if NJ has many pot offenders.

Normally this is where I'd expect to see "HN is turning into reddit", but hackers have always been interested in pot, so...

(reminds me of Pirates of Silicon Valley)

This will definitely force New York and Penn to look for legalization. New York if followed would be the biggest city ever to legalize.

I wonder if the five boroughs would (or could) move before the state. My sense is that the state is holding out because of strong police and corrections lobbies, and Cuomo is trying to not rock the boat. But NYC may have different motivations to decriminalize/legalize sooner. And if NJ legalizes, NYC becomes full of marijuana very quickly.

NYC is basically decriminalized at least from a usage standpoint. Walk through Brooklyn or Manhattan at any hour of the day and you will smell week multiple times on each block.

There are delivery services advertising via craigslist

NYC is already very full of marijuana

Sure, but there's a huge perceptual leap between getting weed surreptitiously delivered by some dude with a backpack you contact on Signal with an entire illegal supply chain stretching down the corridor to Florida and ultimately funding god only knows what sorts of unsavory enterprise up the line and asking your coworker to pick up an eighth for you on his way in commuting on the NJ transit train.

Both routes are illegal, but in one you're clearly acting shifty.

> his Tuesday win makes a Democrat-packed statehouse the only obstacle.

They aren't an obstacle. They wanted it done and Christie was the obstacle.

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