The recently passed legislation concerning the legalization of adult recreational marijuana use in New Jersey is comprehensive and complicated. Although the fact that the legislation itself passed has dominated the headlines, less has been written about the nuts and bolts of marijuana “decriminalization”—that is, the process of migrating the regulation of marijuana usage away from New Jersey’s criminal code (but not completely) and moving toward defining and activating the civil and administrative regulatory schemes.

In this article, we discuss the decriminalization components of one of the bills that Governor Murphy signed into law: The “New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement Assistance, and Marketplace Modernization Act” (A21). The new cannabis laws, including A21, address what is commonly known as recreational use of cannabis. Medicinal use of cannabis, pursuant to a prescription from a physician, for the most part continues to be governed by previously enacted laws. Below is an overview of information that attorneys, law enforcement, and the public, need to know about recreational cannabis.

For persons 21 years of age or older, certain defined acts associated with the possession and use of a recreational cannabis product is legal, so long as it is:

1) First obtained directly from a New Jersey licensed cannabis retailer that received its license from the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission, or

2) Delivered by a New Jersey licensed cannabis delivery service making a delivery of a purchase order fulfilled by that licensed cannabis retailer for off-premises delivery, so long as the delivery is in its original packaging or is accompanied by a sales slip, invoice, receipt, or other statement or memorandum documenting the purchase and delivery.

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