The following statement can be attributed to ACLU-NJ Campaign Strategist Ami Kachalia:
“We are extremely disappointed that the Cannabis Regulatory Commission has failed to live up to its promise to meaningfully reinvest cannabis revenue into communities targeted by decades of marijuana criminalization. The people of New Jersey were clear from the start – they wanted legal cannabis that included reparative provisions. Both the law and the regulations that followed promised significant reinvestment, indicating the social equity excise fee should be adjusted to 12 times higher than what was approved by the Commission today. Before New Jersey legalized and decriminalized cannabis, the state spent more than $143 million per year to enforce marijuana criminalization – the $4 million raised through the SEEF for community reinvestment in the last two years is just a drop in the bucket. New Jersey must do better to ensure Black and Latinx communities who bore the brunt of past enforcement can benefit from the state’s legal cannabis market.”
