Sean Mack Featured in Law.com's Higher Law Regarding Recently Released Cannabis Regulations for Adult-Use Market
Sean Mack, co-chair of the Cannabis & Hemp Law practice, and co-chair of the Litigation practice, at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, was featured in a Q&A with Cheryl Miller in the Higher Law newsletter of Law.com discussing the recently released New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (CRC) regulations for the adult-use market.
Please see below for excerpts from the conversation.
Higher Law: What are the biggest takeaways for you in these regulations?
Mack: A couple of things. The Cannabis Regulatory Commission's mantra has been that they're focused on social equity and safety. The regulations really reflect that the CRC appears to have listened to the feedback that they got during public hearings and put a lot of effort into crafting rules designed to try to give social equity applicants a real chance at participating in this industry.
And on safety, they went into extreme detail in these initial rules to try to make sure that the processing processes, manufacturing processes and testing, labeling, packaging, are done in a really smart way to make sure that the products are safe and to make it less likely that the products end up in the hands of kids, which is one of the things we really wanted to try to do.
In the Q&A, Sean Mack also notes:
· One of the biggest surprises was the CRC’s decision to accept applications on a rolling basis, in contrast to the process in the past where all applicants had a set window to submit applications.
· While the statute caps the number of cultivation licenses at 37 for the first two years, the initial regulations contain no caps on any other license class, although the CRC has reserved the right to set numerical caps or even geographical caps as needed in the future.
· The regulations contain a priority review process whereby applications from a woman-owned business, minority-owned business, or a social equity applicant will jump to the front of the line, regardless of when their application was submitted.
