At Thursday night’s Township Committee meeting, Committeeman Meir Lichtenstein requested that the Township’s attorney look into an ordninance to prevent or limit the use of marijuana in Lakewood by making it illegal to sell or grow marijuana in the township. The Committee voted unanimously to put together such an ordinance which will be voted on at the next Committee meeting.
“We have a lot of children in town, and… I was reached out to by some schools,” Committeeman Lichtenstein said at the meeting, explaining his request.
Governor Murphy recently signed a package of bills legalizing recreational marijuana in New Jersey after voters overwhelmingly passed a November referendum to make it legal in the Garden State. While Lakewood Township cannot make the use of cannabis in the township illegal because of state law allowing it, they can make it illegal to sell or grow it.
I understand that a local ordinance cannot make legal that is which is state or federally illegal, why can’t a local municipality enact their own stricter law?
For example, there is no state law about how to landscape your property many townships a very specific about frontage and how setback a house can be etc.
On a very basics level, municipalities get their legislative powers from the state. (This is different than the state that gets its legislative powers from the Constitution.) If the state gives the municipality permission to legislate in a certain area, only then can it legislate.
Zoning and other housing issues are traditionally given to municipalities by states.
While I don’t know this as a fact, apparently the state has given municipalities the legislative power to adopt ordinances relating to agriculture and business licenses.
Zoning, housing: Local
Licenses, agriculture: State and Federal
Lakewood should have learned from other towns in states with legal MJ. Tax it, make money from it, use it to fix the roads, put in traffic lights, build bus lanes, support public schools.
I thought it’s about respecting the will of the people.
In this case it’s about respecting the will of the few.
POTHOLES IN LAKEWOOD, ESPECIALLY ON PAWNEE ROAD (THE WORST ROAD IN TOWN) IS A FAR GREATER DANGER THAN PROLIFERATION OF MARIJUANA. NEGLECTING TO REPAVE ROADS THAT ARE BEYOND REPAIR IS A TRAVESTY, AN OUTCRY, AND A MISAPPROPRIATION OF THE BOAT LOADS OF TAX DOLLARS THIS TOWNSHIP HAULS IN FROM ITS LOYAL RESIDENTS. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!
I was stoned on some dynamite pot and fell into a pothole. I didn’t trip on it though. I was already tripping way before I encountered it and fell out five feet before it. My head landed in it and I almost lost my head. What a bring down, man. I didn’t have any more pot. The pothole is still there. Be careful bro.
I’m glad you weren’t driving.
Really, Amil ?
Ur worried about potholes?
Potholes destroy tires, in which case it may inconvenience your life.
Pot destroys kids. In which it will end ur life, as you know it.
The people who purchase the cannabis will just purchase it in the next town over and we will loose all the tax revenue. OUR TAXES ARE TO HIGH ALREADY.
We’re now finishing with a Mageifa which hit the old & vulnerable; Now begins a new Mageifa for the young & vulnerable.
Thursday’s I work in Boro Park: a chushiver Chasidishe mesivta rebbe offers me $25 to take his 22 yr old newlywed son home to Lakewood whom came in for his driving test, I refused the money but I took him home.
The entire way to Lakewood he kept on talking about Marijuana being legalized in NJ, he said it’s going to be gan eiden (heaven) Etc.
I afterwards found out that he was away in Israel since age 17, part of that time in a Chasidishe drug rehab , he recently married a young non Chasidishe girl and now lives in a Chasidishe community here.
That’s how the state plans on making money! It’s going to be terrible, all that we can do is to be Mispallel.
So he went to rehab because he was smoking legal pot?
Marijuana is readily available to anyone who wants it anywhere. Legal or not.
Legalizing will make people who use it less likely to use real drugs.
Up until now in order to buy it, you are entering into the illegal world of dealers and pushers. Once you are accustomed to it and have connections, its easy to move further along that road.
Now (theoretically perhaps) one can buy it legally and avoid that whole chevra entirely..
May HaShem send us mashiach soon and until that day comes give us all enough internal satisfaction that we do not need all the excess (food, clothing, relationships, other material things, alcohol, drugs and yes marijuana too. Essentially gashmius when not used in the service of ruchnius is harmful.