Marijuana Moment: New Jersey’s Incoming Governor Supports Legalizing Marijuana Home Cultivation

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With New Jersey voters electing U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) to serve as the state’s next governor, there’s now a decidedly clearer path to advancing a marijuana policy reform long awaited by consumers and advocates in the Garden State: A home grow option.

New Jersey might already have an adult-use cannabis market, but Sherrill replacing Gov. Phil Murphy (R) next year could be a boon for efforts to build upon the voter-approved law in a number of ways.

Just about a week ahead of the election, Sherrill gave a preview of her cannabis policy priorities, which includes preventing youth access to THC products, effectively distributing tax revenue and addressing the lack of a home grow option.

“The legislature feels as if they haven’t really gotten the law right there. The cannabis companies feel as if the law isn’t right,” Sherrill said in an interview. “So some of the kind of low-hanging fruit is the THC drinks that are now unregulated and being sold in 7-Elevens, ensuring that young kids don’t have access to cannabis products, making sure we’re doing better enforcement—because I’ve heard from some mayors concerns about, in bodegas, very young kids are getting access to edibles that look like candy, and their parents don’t realize it’s not.”

“At the same time, addressing some of the home grow provisions, which I’m supportive of, and then ensuring that we have better regulations around cannabis, where it can be sold,” she said. “The reason the cannabis industry wants it is because they want to legitimize their business.”

Sherrill separately said earlier this year that she backs “common-sense regulations, safeguards and limits” for medical and recreational home grow, pledging to work with stakeholders such as law enforcement to create a regulatory model that’s implemented in a “thoughtful and safe way.”

Unlike most other states that have enacted cannabis legalization, New Jersey continues to prohibit home cultivation for both adults and medical marijuana patients. Murphy, the current governor, has argued on multiple occasions that the state’s adult-use marijuana market needs to further mature before home grow is authorized.

Seemingly contradicting that claim, dozens of New Jersey small marijuana businesses and advocacy groups recently called on the legislature to allow adults to cultivate their own cannabis.

Chris Goldstein, a New Jersey-based regional organizer for NORML, said in an op-ed for Marijuana Moment last month that it was encouraging to see in Sherrill a candidate who “wholeheartedly supports legalization and has taken several major pro-cannabis actions while serving in Congress.” Her embrace of home cultivation represents a “big shift for a former federal prosecutor,” he said.

Meanwhile, asked about her views on the allocation of tax revenue from legal cannabis sales, Sherrill said that, under the current law, “some of the cannabis money was really supposed to go into more provisions ensuring that kids didn’t have access to it,” but “that hasn’t happened.”

“I’d like to see some of it going where the legislation was saying that it would go to,” she said. “But then, of course, if we can have more revenue to put into a lot of the programs we want to see statewide, I’d welcome that.”

During her time in Congress, Sherrill in 2019 and 2021 voted in favor of Democratic-led bills to federally legalize marijuana and promote social equity. That legislation—the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act—cleared the House both times, but didn’t advance in the Senate.

Before being elected to Congress in 2018, Sherrill endorsed federal rescheduling of marijuana.

“As someone running for federal office who also worked as a U.S. attorney, I would like to see [marijuana] taken off the Schedule 1 controlled substances list,” she said. “Because quite frankly, that means there’s no known medical use and it can’t be studied. And we all know that that’s simply not the case. So that’s the first thing that I would like to see happen.”

Additionally, she’s consistently supported the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act to prevent federal regulators from penalizing financial institutions simply for working with state-licensed cannabis businesses.

In 2023, the congresswoman sponsored an amendment to defense legislation to expedite the waiver process for military recruits and applicants who admit to prior cannabis use by allowing the lowest-level defense employees to issue such waivers.

The prior year, Sherrill proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to eliminate the federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

Another amendment she filed for the 2025 NDAA, which was blocked from floor consideration, would have expanded eligibility for expungements of non-violent drug convictions by removing an age restriction limiting relief to those who were under 21 at the time of the offense.

In House floor votes, the congresswoman in 2019 and 2020 backed amendments to protect all state marijuana programs from federal intervention. In 2022, she voted in favor of legislation to expand medical cannabis research that was ultimately signed into law by then-President Joe Biden.

This session, meanwhile, the congresswoman filed a bill that would require Elon Musk and other workers at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk has since left, to submit to drug testing to maintain their “special government employee” status.

Outside of marijuana, Sherrill joined other bipartisan congressional lawmakers in 2023 in asking leadership to instruct federal health agencies to include active duty military service members in psychedelic studies.

Curiously, however, she twice voted against amendments from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that were aimed at removing certain research restrictions for Schedule I drugs, including cannabis and psychedelics.

NORML has given Sherrill an “A” grade in its voter guide.

While it’s not clear the extent to which the marijuana platforms of the two top candidates for New Jersey governor influenced the final vote on Tuesday, the Republican candidate, former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R), opposes legalization and called marijuana a “gateway drug”.

The post New Jersey’s Incoming Governor Supports Legalizing Marijuana Home Cultivation appeared first on Marijuana Moment.

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