The three Princeton residents were among nearly 350 people who tuned in to a hearing public officials hosted last week after Princeton’s Cannabis Task Force recommended opening three dispensaries in the 18-square-mile town of 30,000 people.
In towns both where officials have approved a marijuana market within their borders, like Pennington and Livingston, and where they have not, like Mahwah, Verona, and Northfield, hundreds of people have signed online petitions urging municipal officials to prohibit cannabis shops altogether, or enact restrictions such as keeping them away from schools.
“I have heard these same arguments literally hundreds of times in towns across the region,” Goldstein said.
Hopewell’s critics agonized over how close dispensaries would be to schools and whether the packaging of edibles might appeal to children, Peters-Manning said.
But the opt-outs were more of a time out, Peters-Manning and Armington said.
About 35 towns that had prohibited all cannabis businesses now allow at least one type, the Asbury Park Press recently found.
This is going to attract those 25- to 35-year-olds who want to get high and go to the bars,” she said.
“There’s some very valid concerns, but there’s a lot of misinformation flying around.
At a recent public meeting about a dispensary planned for a former bar and restaurant on 14th Street, residents commented for five hours about their fears of a dispensary in their residential area.
“In my mind, 75% of the voters in Princeton approved this.
And so, all these policy arguments are somewhat irrelevant to the question at hand, which is: How do we implement that constitutional amendment that everyone supports?” resident Mark Boulding said.
“As a physician, I can tell you that there are harmful effects of habitual cannabis use, not only to adults, but especially to children,” resident Jason Rogart said at Princeton’s hearing.
In Princeton, a Smart Approaches to Marijuana advocate from Washington, D.C., and an addiction psychologist from Chicago were among five people who gave presentations at last week’s cannabis hearing.
Dana DiFilippo comes to the New Jersey Monitor from WHYY, Philadelphia’s NPR station, and the Philadelphia Daily News, a paper known for exposing corruption and holding public officials accountable.
Sophie Nieto-Muñoz, a New Jersey native and former Trenton statehouse reporter for NJ.com, shined a spotlight on the state’s crumbling unemployment system and won several awards for investigative reporting from the New Jersey Press Association.
New Jersey Monitor provides fair and tough reporting on the issues affecting New Jersey, from political corruption to education to criminal and social justice.