You would figure that Governor Phil "Cheech" Murphy and Senate President Steve "Chong" Sweeney would be able to prevent their marijuana bill from going "Up In Smoke." Especially since the governor ran on legalization as a platform to get elected, but as Assembly Minority leader Jon Bramnick said when he called New Jersey 101.5,

"These were some hard nos, these weren't like, just shaky nos. They were hard nos. These were like people going, 'I AM NOT VOTING FOR MARJUANA,' and it seemed like forever."

Bramnick talked about the risk in it for politicians. He said, "It's a risky vote and politicians don't know how it's going to fall out and if it's a bad outcome with people driving on marijuana or people on the street getting jammed up, politicians avoid trouble."

How did he feel? " I was pleased that it wasn't voted on, I don't think it's completely dead but it's going to be dead for a while, you're not going to see another marijuana vote for a while," Bramnick said.

If we did get legalized marijuana, Bramnick says the money like that from sports betting would go to the general fund, which I call the abyss. "We're two hundred billion dollars in debt, and our budget is only a total of 37 billion, so when you're 200 billion dollars in debt, 60 million dollars isn't very much to try to solve the problems in the state so wherever it goes, it's not enough to fix what we've got."

Sticking with the sports betting theme, I asked Bramnick to pick the over or under for legalized marijuana within a year. "I would say after the elections in lame duck maybe but these were some hard no's," Bramnick said, "but with anything in Jersey politics, never say never."

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