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Willie Beemer has lived in ceaseless pain since shattering his right leg in a motorbike accident at age 14. There’s a visible knot on his shin, which turns even a short walk into an arduous slog, and that’s only when the leg isn’t numb entirely.
He has gone through countless gallons of Motrin arthritis cream over the years; sometimes he gets relief from expensive lotions containing CBD oil. But nothing works better on his pain than cannabis, which he cannot afford. The only logical, life-saving alternative is to grow his own marijuana, because the two ounces he needs each month costs about $800 at a legal dispensary.
So imagine his trauma last June 13, when the police entered his mobile home in Pittsgrove, confiscated the 15 marijuana plants from his tiny greenhouse, and charged him with a pair of first-degree felonies for cultivating and distributing cannabis.
“I showed the summons to my brother, who’s a cop in Cumberland County, and he looked at it and said, ‘You’re facing 20 years,’” Beemer, 49, told us last week. “I couldn’t believe it. It had me pretty shook. It felt so inhumane. They just went in and took my medicine.”
And the cruelty is compounded by two felony charges that both carry 10-year prison sentences.
This is a lesson in harebrained government that we share each year with lawmakers who believe that home grow will have negative impact on our nascent recreational industry, and should therefore remain illegal. The man holding up all bills that would permit home cultivation, Senate President Nick Scutari, has cited that same concern since the legal market opened, though in November he conceded that “home grow, people will be able to do it someday. . . .but we’re not there yet.”
That’s no longer an adequate excuse to make people suffer, because in the two years since the dispensaries have been in full vigor, we have learned this much: Business has been great for the corporations that dominate New Jersey’s recreational market, while the lack of access to affordable cannabis for sick people is still — to use Beemer’s word – inhumane.
“I recall hearing that legalizing cannabis was done primarily for social justice reasons, not for profit reasons,” said Sen. Vin Gopal, who has led the budding effort to legalize home grow.
“But it’s been very frustrating watching how legal cannabis has rolled out. The people making the money weren’t really impacted by the War on Drugs – multistate corporations are making the money – and preventing sick people from access is just wrong. This isn’t the model we were expecting.”
There are actually 24 models New Jersey can emulate: That’s the number of states that allow citizens to grow marijuana at home for medical purposes – even Utah and South Dakota do it – and 11 of those 24 allow home cultivation for recreational use as well.
New York, in fact, is on track to permit home grow starting June 29. The grower will be allowed to personally possess six plants – three of them “mature” – and five pounds of “useable” cannabis at any time. The reason they have no fear about cutting into the legal market is because there is no proof anywhere that home grow does that.
It is hard to determine how rigorously our state enforces its no-grow diktat, which two-thirds of New Jerseyans oppose. Remarkably, Beemer’s case was dismissed in September – without explanation from the Salem County judge, he tells us – and Ken Wolski of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana senses that law enforcement is “probably treating personal grows as a lower priority.”
Chris Goldstein, an organizer for The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), believes otherwise, however: He says narcotics enforcement units on the county level are policing home grow as vigorously as ever, particularly in Essex, Atlantic, and Ocean Counties. And it’s all because of one man.
“I think Scutari’s top-down rhetoric encourages this stuff at the county level,” Goldstein said. “The law is still on the books and people are still getting harassed and arrested and sent to prison — or at least threatened with prison.”
Needless to say, applying a three-to-five-year sentence for growing just one plant is a disgraceful part of our history – and our present – that needs to end.
That’s why Gopal will return to lobbying Scutari this month, with a small ask: Rather than letting every citizen grow at home, let’s start by moving a smaller bill he has written with Sen. Troy Singleton that establishes a pilot program which allows home grow just for our 80,000 medical users. The measure even has Gov. Murphy’s support.
Gopal has been at this for three years – in part because a felony charge for a plant is “absolutely insane.” But it’s also because the no-grow law has perpetuated a broken criminal justice system, hindered research, and restricted access to the people who needed it most – the desperately ill.
This is abundantly clear to everyone but our most prominent lawmaker. Someone needs to clue him in.
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