TOMS RIVER, NJ – This week, the Toms River Township Council and Toms River Mayor Maurice Hill joined the chorus of New Jersey politicians taking aim only at police officers when it comes to the use of legalized recreational marijuana.
Hill and the Toms River Council joined Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy and the Ocean County Board of Commissioners in singling out police officers.
Under federal law, marijuana is still recognized as a Schedule I narcotic. Two weeks ago, a memo from New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin warned chiefs, sheriffs, and other law enforcement executives against penalizing law officers for exercising their now legal right in New Jersey to use recreational marijuana.
Last Wednesday, Ocean County Commissioner John P. Kelly read a letter from Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy, saying the Ocean County Sheriff’s Department will continue following federal law, ignoring the Attorney General’s Directive.
“The sheriff feels very strongly about this and asked me to address it at today’s public meeting,” Kelly said on Wednesday. “I agree that the governor needs to immediately address this issue.”\
Kelly and the four other members of the Board of Commissioners joined Mastronardy, all Republicans in calling on Governor Phil Murphy to get involved through executive order to exclude cops from being able to use recreational marijuana.
Police officers are now the only profession being singled out for using marijuana in New Jersey. Meanwhile, professions such as truck drivers, train conductors, bus drivers, school bus drivers, teachers, doctors, nurses, EMTs, firefighters, public workers, and other professions are not being singled out by the bi-partisan effort to exempt police officers from their newfound right to join the rest of New Jersey to use recreational marijuana legally.
If successful, police officers could face punitive and possibly criminal consequences for using legal marijuana, perhaps even as far as losing their jobs.
Under New Jersey law, the state is the first state to explicitly protect employees who use cannabis while off-duty and outside the workplace.
In general, employers can no longer penalize, suspend, or terminate employees for off-duty cannabis use. Cannabis must be purchased legally from a dispensary authorized by the state to sell cannabis in order for use or possession to be legal.
On-duty use, possession, and impairment at the workplace can still be prohibited by employers, which would also apply to police officers short of any changes to the law requested by politicians targeting cops.
New Jersey State PBA President Pat Colligan, in a recent interview with New Jersey 101.5, urged his rank and file members to hold off on using legal cannabis for now, until the state clears the air on off-duty use for police officers.
“There are a few issues that have to be ironed out. We’ve asked our members to hold off until they’re cleared up,” Colligan said. “The most important issue is that the attorney general’s office hasn’t come out with its new guidelines for drug testing so technically if I was to test positive for cannabis tomorrow I would still be placed on the national drug registry and still have the probability of termination in my department.”
Colligan said, personally, he wouldn’t use marijuana because he has spent his career arresting people for illegal marijuana possession and use and it wouldn’t be right if he started using it personally.
“There are a few issues that have to be ironed out. We’ve asked our members to hold off until they’re cleared up. The most important issue is that the attorney general’s office hasn’t come out with its new guidelines for drug testing so technically, if I was to test positive for cannabis tomorrow I would still be placed on the national drug registry and still have the probability of termination in my department.”
“Personally if I was going to use I probably would wait until I retire,” he said in that interview. “It’s difficult because I have almost 30 years in and I spent 29 of them going after people with marijuana. Not targeting them, but arresting people with marijuana then suddenly I get that call two weeks ago from the attorney general saying ‘hey it’s legal for your members and we’re putting out a memo to the chiefs association’ so it’s kind of an odd place to be, but somebody was in that place when prohibition ended.”
Read More: NJ State PBA President opens up about off-duty police using weed
There have been no legal challenges yet, but the singling out of police officers could bring civil rights lawsuits against municipalities and county organizations in the future.