South Jersey emerges as a leading area for licensed marijuana businesses in New Jersey

Several South Jersey counties are emerging as the leading places in the state where marijuana business owners are looking to set up shop.

Burlington, Atlantic, and Camden Counties combined have garnered more than one-third of the annual licensees since the start of recreational cannabis licensing, according to newly released data from the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission. Annual licenses are required for cannabis business owners — whether they’re retailers, growers, manufacturers, or testers — to legally begin operations, and obtaining one is among the final procedural steps before opening.

“Shout out to South Jersey,” said Wesley McWhite III, director of the commission’s office of diversity and inclusion, when discussing the data at the agency’s public meeting earlier this month.

Since starting recreational-use licensing in December 2021, the CRC has issued 141 annual licenses, with the highest numbers in South Jersey counties: 22 in Burlington, 18 in Atlantic, and 13 in Camden. Union and Somerset Counties round out the top five, with all other counties in the single digits, according to the data. In most counties, a majority of annual licenses have gone to cannabis retailers.

None of those counties is among the state’s top five for population, according to recent census data — and New Jersey’s most populous county, Bergen, at 952,997 residents, has just four annual licenses awarded. Camden County, the most populous county in South Jersey, has a population just more than half the size of Bergen, but three times the annual licenses.

Atlantic, Burlington, and Camden are also in the top 10 for businesses converting their temporary licenses, also known as conditional licenses, to annual ones. So is Cumberland County. That process represents a step on the path to opening, and indicates additional cannabis businesses are looking to set up in those areas.

Where a business chooses to open can be based on a number of factors, commission spokesperson Christene Carr said, including available real estate and whether a local municipality has opted in to allowing cannabis businesses in its borders.

Just 36% of New Jersey’s 564 municipalities have opted in, Carr said. That leaves thousands of applicants looking to set up shop in 203 towns, roughly a quarter of which are in South Jersey. Towns that have opted to allow marijuana businesses are still able to create zoning laws restricting where they can operate. And the available real estate can limit a business’ options even further.

Most applicants who are looking to convert their conditional license to an annual one have indicated that getting municipal approval is the biggest roadblock, Carr said. However, that wasn’t an issue for Phasal Dispensary, which had its soft opening in Runnemede, Camden County, on Dec. 17, co-owner Vishal Patel said.

“We also have licenses in other cities, but this was the easiest,” said Patel, who is involved with the Restore brand of medical dispensaries in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Phasal, he added, is among his first entries in the recreational cannabis world in New Jersey, and city legislators have been “very supportive and very helpful” with its path to opening.

“We looked at so many other places, and it wasn’t as easy to get into [legislators’] schedules as in Runnemede,” he said.

Phasal was able to secure municipal approval, as well as its property at 1100 N. Black Horse Pike, during the application process. As a result, Patel and his co-owners were able to quickly convert their conditional license to an annual one, allowing them to open on a relatively short timeline. Now, Phasal was looking to celebrate with a grand opening on Saturday.

“Everything just happened,” he said. “We felt like this was the right spot for us.”

South Jersey was also a prime choice because of its location, Patel said. He lives just over the bridge in Philadelphia, and one of Phasal’s other two co-owners is nearby in Camden (the third lives in North Jersey). As a result, managing the business is a little easier.

Not all cannabis businesses owners, however, have had such smooth experiences. In fact, 59 recreational-only license holders are operational, according to the CRC’s data. That number will likely increase as data for medical operators, which currently are kept on a different system, are integrated into the agency’s newer system.

The commission found a number of factors preventing the nonoperational businesses from opening, McWhite said at this month’s public meeting. Among them were local planning and zoning board issues, administrative turnover, funding, property shortages across the state, increasing construction costs, and stigma against cannabis.

Still, New Jersey’s marijuana industry sold about $578 million worth of recreational and medical cannabis in the first three quarters of 2023 (totals for the fourth quarter have not yet been released). Marijuana in the state, CRC executive director Jeff Brown said in a statement earlier this month, is “well on its way to being a billion-dollar industry.” Medical marijuana sales began in the state in 2012.