Responding to scrutiny from the president of the state senate, New Jersey’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission , to expand into the adult-use market later this year.
The state also remains dogged by critiques that it has failed to create a reliable and fair system for allocating scarce medicinal and recreational cannabis licenses.
Pangaea was the lead appellant in that case and, along with seven other unsuccessful 2018 applicants, showed how a lack of internal controls resulted in arbitrary decisions being made by seemingly overworked agency staff.
Fourteen months later, however, the CRC instead issued a new round of denials.
Since recreational sales were approved by New Jersey voters in 2020, the expansion of the cannabis industry has been bogged down in a knotty approval process that had multiple applicants forced to turn to the slowly grinding wheels of the justice system as their only avenue of appeal.
The CRC did not issue its first batch of various licenses for the new market until late last month.
The missed deadline and the glacial pace of the approval process drew the attention of the New Jersey Senate President Nick Scutari, one of the prime movers of the creation of the state’s medical-marijuana market.
The senator said Monday he was happy to see the logjam reduced but intended to forge ahead with the formation of the committee, possibly a joint Senate and Assembly panel, to conduct further fact-finding on all aspects of the pending roll-out.
“There is little the CRC couldn’t have fixed earlier by issuing additional licenses and better communicating with applicants and licensees,” said John W.
Bartlett told Financial Regulation News the CRC had, for whatever reason, refused to consider any appeal unless it was in front of a judge.
One view of the licensing environment is that New Jersey, and some other states, launched their medicinal marijuana programs at a time when its approval was not politically unanimous, and rather than implement systems that encouraged the industry’s development, state regulators instead slow-walked the creation of an administrative minefield with of scarce licensing opportunities and restrictive standards.
“Expansion into the adult-use market – with a substantial advantageous start ahead of new applicants – is a privilege that must not be taken lightly,” said Houenou, who was appointed to lead the CRC just last year by Gov.