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New Jersey Gives Green Light to Grow Medical Marijuana in Secaucus

New Jersey gives green light to grow medical marijuana in secaucus

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New Jersey Gives Green Light to Grow Medical Marijuana in Secaucus

Time to celebrate: New Jersey gives the green light to grow medical marijuana in Secaucus.

If you think you’d never see the headline “New Jersey Gives Green Light To Grow Medical Marijuana in Secaucus,” then today’s your lucky day. Legislators in the aptly-nicknamed Garden State approved the construction of a 10,000 square-foot dispensary for medicinal cannabis outside of Secaucus in a large wetland area traditionally known as the Meadowlands.

New Jersey Gives Green Light to Grow Medical Marijuana in Secaucus

New Jersey gives green light to grow medical marijuana in secaucus

According to NewJersey.com, the planned nonprofit dispensary will provide care to up to 4,000 patients a month. Upon completion, the dispensary, run by the Harmony Foundation, will be the sixth in the state.

The approval was made under the auspices of current New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, which is surprising to some; Christie’s track record on pot has been, up until now, consistently anti-legalization, (erroneously) equating the substance to heroin.

“After two years of designing and constructing this state-of-the-art facility, we are excited to finally put it into action,” said Shaya Brodchandel, Harmony’s president and CEO.

“(The selected strains) are well suited for New Jersey medical patients’ conditions and to our unique growing system,” Brodchandel added.

While the dispensary is great news for some, the good fortune isn’t necessarily accessible to all. As NewJersey.com noted, the price for medicinal cannabis in New Jersey is the highest in the country, averaging $500 per ounce. For the 13,2000 registered patients in the state, the price is steep compared to other states, where the average price falls in between $200-$400 for the same amount.

Of course, the state’s incentive to authorize the dispensary isn’t entirely altruistic to begin with. As many New Jersey lawmakers have noted, full-on cannabis legalization could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the local economy.

Despite strides to service more patients licensed for medicinal cannabis use, some are dissatisfied with what they have deemed an approval process stalled by bureaucratic red tape.

“We’re very disappointed with the pace of the process,” stated Ken Wolski, who heads the Coalition for Medical Marijuana-New Jersey Approval. He went on to say that the legislative nod for the dispensary is “long overdue.”

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