The makeup of New Jersey’s new Cannabis Regulatory Commission violates the law that created the commission, claims a lawyer for the state’s chapter of the NAACP.
This comes days after a social justice advocate criticized the commission due to the fact that none of its members are Black men—who have historically been the most disproportionately arrested and convicted of marijuana offenses in the state.
A letter obtained by Gothamist/WNYC shows the civil rights organization's lawyer demanding that the state reveal the backgrounds of the five appointed commission members.
In the letter, Gregg L. Zeff quoted a section of the new cannabis legislation, “At least one member shall by a State representative of a national organization or State branch of a national organization with a stated mission of studying, advocating, or adjudicating against minority historical oppression, past and present discrimination, unemployment, poverty and income inequality, and other forms of social injustice or inequality.”
“It is not clear to me that any appointed member of the commission meets this mandatory requirement,” Zeff, the NJ NAACP’s Legal Redress Chair of the NJ NAACP, wrote.
The commission is made up of a Latina woman, a Latino man, a white woman, a white man, and a Black woman, Dianna Houenou. Houenou, a former ACLU attorney, is the commission’s chair. Zeff commented on her appointment, stating that while she is an “excellent choice” for chair, “be reminded that she has been working for the Governor’s office for two years and is not ‘a State representative of a national organization or State branch of a national organization with a stated mission of studying, advocating, or adjudicating against minority historical oppression…’”
New Jersey NAACP president Richard T. Smith said the commission should take somebody off the commission or add two seats.
The Cannabis Regulatory Commission will determine who can legally grow and sell marijuana in New Jersey. A spokesman for the Governor declined a request for comment about the background of the commission members.
Last week, Rev. Dr. Charles Boyer, the founder of the group Salvation and Social Justice Tweeted his dismay about the lack of representation of Black men. “There’s no one on the commission who has lived experience with the brutalities of the drug war,” he told Gothamist/WNYC last week. “There’s no one here who knows what it has been like to have been arrested or incarcerated. There’s no one here who was ever in the underground market.”
With reporting by Danny Lewis and Christopher Robbins
