Half Of New Jersey Towns Poised To Ban Cannabis Businesses

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

62% : "The people who want marijuana in Livingston are very vocal and really want it," said Mayor Shawn Klein of Livingston, which is opting out of cannabis for now.
50% : Faced with an August 21st deadline to opt out of cannabis operations or be locked into it for five years, almost half of the state's municipalities are foregoing the immediate chance to open marijuana retail, wholesale, or manufacturing facilities -- and therefore the chance to collect as much as a 2% tax and licensing fees.
50% : In Union City, Mayor Brian Stack is stopping marijuana operations from opening in his town even though he is also a state senator who cast a "yes" vote for marijuana legalization.
50% : Bill Caruso, an attorney and lobbyist who has long worked on cannabis legalization in the state, said some rural towns are considering allowing marijuana greenhouses on existing farms.
48% : In addition to levying taxes on cannabis operations, Jersey City is imposing significant fees: $15,000 annually for a retailer and $25,000 for a cannabis consumption lounge.
47% : New York is also in the process of legalizing marijuana, and towns there have until December 31st to keep the operations out of their municipalities.
46% : "I've counseled towns on this that you can ban it, but please know you're not banning the delivery of it in your town, you're just banning basically the ability to reap tax revenue out of this," Caruso said.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.