the recreational marijuana Marketplace launched two years ago but it looks nothing like most expected there are still too few dispensaries the cost of cannabis is too high there's a limited amount of product being offered and many of the licenses issued by the state have stalled in the next stages of Municipal approval despite recent figures showing the industry recently raked in roughly 180 million dollars the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing today to Hash it all out and to hold the Cannabis Regulatory Commission accountable senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan was there to hear why they say this industry can't seem to move away from the underground Market the black market is out there advancing every single day members of the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled New Jersey's cannabis Regulatory Commission about its low rate of retail and cultivation license approvals and how that's driving prices unacceptably higher for legal weed in New Jersey it's hurting both medical marijuana patients and pushing recreational customers into the Legacy black Marketplace Senators complained if you're not going to get these licenses out the door faster they're just going out there and selling more product on the street in the black market that's what I'm saying out there but on the medical side if there's a consensus that for many this is medicine um we are literally pricing people out of their medical needs I agree that pricing is too high in in the legal Market if we can license more businesses expand retail outlets that's the best way the CRC can impact uh illegal sales and convert consumers to the legal Market CRC officials insisted building this new industry take takes time that they've at least conditionally approved 1300 of the initial 2000 overall license applications and collected nine and a half million dollars in tax revenues they assured Senators efficiency is improving but one entrepreneur charged some applicants have waited more than 540 days for license approval and Senators voiced their disapproval I will be honest some of the things you said today don't match up with what we hear from our constituents and some of those things include a lack of transparency big corporations get priority the process takes too long the access to Capital is the problem and you know this isn't this is cannabis and this is New Jersey Jersey is a difficult regulated market if you want to build a shed in your backyard the CRC can see it's not meeting market demand and explained it's hard to bring new cultivators online New Jersey's got only 17 approved cannabis Growers with 60 more in the pipeline but nationally the industry averages 889 licensed cultivators per state if there was outdoor cultivation in the state of New Jersey the price would drop by probably about 50 percent as soon as those cultivators come online unfortunately all of the cultivation in New Jersey right now is indoor when I talk to patients you know they do want sun and soil grown cannabis New Jersey's the Garden State primed to grow cash crops but a couple of senators said open air weed Farms are a hard sell in their communities nobody really wants this in their backyard an outdoor grow because of the the strong odor that emanates from a large outdoor grow there's also the fear that there's going to be you know theft of products some Senators also warned about cheaper unregulated hemp products that many folks buy critics also Focus on how minority and social Equity license applicants still encounter so many hurdles like raising capital and suggested New Jersey needs to try harder without higher priority money will be sucked out of local economies and transferred to Big corporations that are white owned and based out of state you guys need to get creative and give investors incentives to to give money think about uh poor financially disadvantaged people who used the selling of cannabis in order to feed their families sometimes a lot of these folks being black so even when we talk about getting rid of the black market I think it says a lot so I encourage us to think about our language but I think there'll be good takeaways from this and legislation and also just to learn more about exactly what's happening and where it's happening the committee's already asked the CRC to generate a quarterly report for better transparency and it will probably hold another hearing to get more information about how to grow this industry better as a state house Annex in Trenton I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight news [Music]