10/30/09 By Evan Nison

Ballot Initiative Coordinator

Monday October 19th, 2009 was the official kickoff to NORML New Jersey’s ballot initiative in New Brunswick.

As NORML NJ’s Ballot Initiative Coordinator this was particularly exciting since it is the first municipality besides my hometown where we will be canvassing for signatures.

These petitions will put an initiative  on the 2010 electoral ballot to make adult personal marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority. The proposed law would also mandate that the municipality release a report that would include, along with many other details, estimates of money and time spent on adult marijuana offenses. Also, if an arrest is still made despite it being the lowest priority, the police officer would have to explain why it happened. This is an important aspect of the ordinance as it holds police accountable.

We have been canvassing in my hometown of East Brunswick for about five months now and are well on our way to our signature goal.  NORML-NJ is  excited to help start spreading the initiatives into New Brunswick. With Rutgers University based in New Brunswick, we are sure to have a lot of interest.

Our initial plan was to use East Brunswick to help us perfect the process for other areas. These two towns are next to each other in central Jersey, yet the scenes are so much different. Our success so far has been a welcome surprise because East Brunswick is very family oriented. I feel college towns like New Brunswick are really key, because we’ll have even more support. The school provides a huge pool of potential activists and the Rutger students are  proving that they are willing to get active already, even before we have printed a petition.

When I was brainstorming with a couple of NORML NJ board members, including Rick Cusick from High Times Magazine (in fact, Rick is the chair of the initiative committee), we realized, “What better place to recruit new active members than Rutgers and what better way to do it than have the Associate Publisher of High Times come and talk to them?”

There are literally thousands of pot smoking students right up the block from where we have been petitioning who would love nothing more than to meet Rick. Because so many showed up that night, we declared at the speech that we would be comfortable starting to canvas in New Brunswick within weeks.

The kickoff of this initiative could not have gone better. Nearly everyone who attended the speech joined the SSDP chapter, our ally during this campaign, and almost half of the attendees agreed to help the local initiatives.

Rick did an awesome job, entertaining the crowd and also explaining just why it is so important to act now. He emphasized that the war on drugs is mostly a war on the youth and without the participation of the college students, young marijuana smokers will continue to be targeted by police. He  shared with us how he met Bob Dylan while interviewing Willie Nelson on the legendary tour bus and also offered some advice to young people: “There is no better time to be involved than right now!”

Rick could not have delivered a more empowering and entertaining speech; nor could I have imagined a better kickoff to what I believe will be New Jersey’s biggest attempt at recreational marijuana reform to date.

We are still looking for petitioners and other potential NJ towns to come to, especially in northern Jersey. We can run a ballot initiative campaign in the town s that fall under the Faulkner Act. If you are interested please contact me at Evan@NORMLNJ.org.