I recently paid a visit to Ed Forchion at the Cafe in Trenton, where he is openly selling a nasty weed that causes premature death in one in five people who smoke it.
And he sells marijuana too.
The bad weed, of course, is tobacco. Although cigarette smoking is by far the leading cause of preventable death in America, any shopkeeper can get a license to sell tobacco products.
“Cigarettes are the most dangerous thing I sell here,” said Forchion, the outspoken marijuana attorney also known as “NJ Weedman”.
As for these other weeds, our state lawmakers cannot agree on how to implement the “constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana,” which voters voted 2-1 in favor last month.
The problem, if I may assume, is the common assumption among politicians that any system that is in place now has intrinsic value.
This is nonsense, and the current discrepancy between the legal treatment of marijuana and tobacco is perhaps the best evidence of it.
If you were to design a regulatory scheme from scratch, you would certainly not favor cigarettes over joints. A look at the CDC death statistics shows that this doesn’t make sense.
But that is the system that has been passed on to the current crowd of legislators. Fortunately, it all ends on January 1st, when this change becomes part of our state constitution.
Or does this system end on that day?
“I don’t know if I can answer that question,” the main sponsor of the legalization effort told me.
State Senator Nick Scutari, a Union County Democrat, has led the legalization movement for years. With this referendum, he achieved a hard-fought victory.
The language of the question on the November 3 ballot, however, states that the regulation of the cannabis market “is detailed in the laws enacted by lawmakers”.
That’s the hard part. Scutari has insisted that such laws must be passed by New Years Day. However, a date has not yet been set for a final vote when the legislature will have to work out some key differences in the draft laws.
However, both bills grant the Cannabis Regulatory Commission regulatory powers. Even if they pass this month, it may take a year or more for pharmacies to open.
Forchion doesn’t wait. He’s already selling weeds from the back of his coffee house across from Trenton City Hall. But he’s been relatively restrained, at least for a man who once lit a joint in the legislative viewing galleries.
Regardless of whether the draft laws are passed or not, Forchion celebrates with a grand opening of its pharmacy.
“The constitutional amendment is active on the first day of the year and is intended to legalize it,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be the first to open the first public pharmacy.”
When I was running this from Scutari, a real life attorney, he said, “It’s a fair reading that arrests should stop provided there is no regulation.”
“But there is an argument either way,” added Scutari. “If we can’t do that, this argument has to be answered.”
The Senate leadership and the Congregation leadership have argued over a number of questions, including whether the use of psilocybin mushrooms should be included in a decriminalization bill that is expected to be part of the legalization package.
Scutari said the current penalties for possession of so-called “magic mushrooms” are draconian.
“People grow it in the yard and eat it and they could go to jail for five years,” he said.
That was a sticking point, but apparently not anymore. Scutari said he and assembly spokesman Craig Coughlin had agreed that this would be considered a separate bill.
Another sticking point was the introduction of an excise tax on marijuana cultivation, which goes hand in hand with state and local sales taxes.
When I asked if he would prefer to collect this tax, Scutari replied, “Not particularly. I think we have to keep the tax rate down or people will absolutely buy from the illegal dealers. “
The Weedman agrees on this point.
“The black market is going nowhere,” he said. “We have been doing this for a long time and know how to avoid being discovered. Well not me I am not avoiding discovery because I have a political agenda. “
This agenda is intended to give current black market dealers the opportunity to obtain a license to sell legally. Scutari said he was compassionate.
“Hopefully it becomes a legal business,” he said of the Weedman.
It already is – at least when it comes to the weeds that kill people.
As for that, we have to wait and see.