Why New Yorkers Aren’t Buying Marijuana in New Jersey (at Least Not Yet)

Marijuana dispensaries in New Jersey this weekend were bustling with patrons eager to get their hands on cannabis products as legal recreational sales of the drug kicked off across the state. On Friday, one woman outside a dispensary in Maplewood rejoiced out loud that she had “outlived Prohibition!”

Among the crowd of patrons were people who had trekked across the Hudson River from New York City, where recreational sales are not permitted. Were these early signs of a sort of “reverse bridge-and-tunnel” effect, with New Jersey emerging as a new hot spot for weed aficionados and curious cannabis users?

“The only reason I came to Jersey was literally just to buy legal pot — that’s really the truth,” said Ethan, a 29-year-old Manhattanite who declined to give his surname because he did not want his employer to know he was there, on Saturday. “To buy it legal and not to have to deal through the illegal channels, it makes it easier. Even though it’s a premium, it just feels better.”

Ethan, who rented a Zipcar with a friend for the trip from New York to the Apothecarium dispensary in Maplewood, said that he had no plans to hang out in the area, apart from “smoking a J on the street.”

The relationship between New Jersey and New York is close but contentious, with New Jersey’s suburban life often portrayed as less glamorous than the fast life of the city. But anyone waiting to see New Yorkers flooding into New Jersey probably shouldn’t expect to see a reverse pipeline materialize any time soon, especially after New York City decriminalized use of the drug in recent months.

Eric, a 45-year-old Newark resident who works in Manhattan and was in line to buy weed on Saturday, said that he expected mostly people with cars to make the trip over.

“But not the ones that catch the subway because it’s too much,” he added. “New York, they got some stuff going on out there, and folks are using that.”

Crucially, there are currently no operational dispensaries in nearby Hoboken and Jersey City, which were the facilities allowed to offer recreational cannabis, according to the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission.

Those areas are reachable from Manhattan via a $2.75 ride on the PATH train. A dispensary in Secaucus, although not far from a PATH station, sells only medicinal cannabis.

Statewide, there are 13 dispensaries licensed for recreational sales. Although many of them are accessible from New York City via car or longer trips aboard New Jersey Transit, none seem poised to capture the business of New Yorkers casually crossing the Hudson for an afternoon weed run.

Hoboken is set to open its first dispensary this spring, but that location did not apply for an expansion to offer recreational sales, according to the Cannabis Regulatory Commission. Applications have poured in from Jersey City.

In response to a reporter asking whether he traveled to New Jersey from New York City, one man outside a Rise dispensary in Bloomfield on Saturday replied, “Yeah right, I’m going to talk about how I’m smuggling weed back to New York.”

DeVaughn Ward, a senior legislative counsel member at the Marijuana Policy Project, said that the…