{"id":17279,"date":"2020-11-03T22:10:34","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T03:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=17279"},"modified":"2020-11-03T22:10:34","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T03:10:34","slug":"weed-wins-in-a-landslide-in-ocean-county-state-legalization-effort-successful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2020\/11\/weed-wins-in-a-landslide-in-ocean-county-state-legalization-effort-successful\/","title":{"rendered":"Weed Wins in a Landslide in Ocean County, State Legalization Effort Successful"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A lawn sign supporting the legalization of marijuana along Route 35 in Ortley Beach, Nov. 2020. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Supporters of legalizing cannabis came out in force Tuesday, propelling New Jersey to likely become the latest state to legalize recreational use.<\/p>\n

In Ocean County, the results based on mail-in votes were overwhelming: 148,051 voters were in favor of legalization compared to 102,759 opposed. In all, 59 percent of the county\u2019s voters favored legalization. Ocean County notably has the highest number of medical marijuana patients of any county statewide. Across the entire state, the measure won by an even higher margin of 67 percent in favor to 32 percent opposed, results showed at the time this article was published.<\/p>\n

\u201cGarden State voters spoke resoundingly,\u201d said Erik Altieri, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the\u00a0National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. \u201cThey are demanding their lawmakers end the failed policy of marijuana criminalization, and instead pursue a more sensible path of regulation and legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ballot question asked voters if they favored amending New Jersey\u2019s constitution to legalize\u00a0adult-use possession, production, and sale of marijuana to those age 21 or older. Though the measure passed resoundingly, the vote was technically non-binding since it was referred by the state legislature. The state senate and assembly must still act to formally enact the measure and create regulations and licenses for recreational marijuana sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir first priority should be bringing about an end to the tens of thousands of low-level marijuana possession arrests that occur each year in New Jersey,\u201d said Carly Wolf, NORML\u2019s State Policies Coordinator. \u201cOnce this is accomplished, they should then expeditiously move forward to meet voters\u2019 second demand, which is to initiate regulations to license and oversee the commercial cannabis market in New Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supporters of legalizing cannabis came out in force Tuesday, propelling New Jersey to likely become the latest state to legalize recreational use. In Ocean County, the results based on mail-in votes were overwhelming: 148,051 voters were in favor of legalization compared to 102,759 opposed. In all, 59 percent of the county\u2019s voters favored legalization. Ocean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,603],"class_list":["post-17279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-marijuana-legalization"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/IMG_0050-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-4uH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}