Cannabis dispensary opens near the Jersey Shore, becoming 16th in N.J.
Updated 4:30 PM;
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A new medical marijuana dispensary opened in Neptune Friday, becoming the 16th in the state as New Jersey expands medical cannabis and looks to launch legal weed sales for people 21 and older.
Zen Leaf opened to patients at 10 a.m. at the site of a shuttered Smashburger. The company’s first dispensary in Elizabeth opened last spring.
“We’re expecting this to be a very busy store,” said Anthony Marsico, executive vice president of Verano, the Illinois-based company that runs Zen Leaf. “This is a widely underserved area.”
Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
A month before going public in Canada, the Chicago pot giant Verano Holdings quietly settled a federal lawsuit that accused the ascendant $3 billion firm and its subsidiary of discriminating against a Black employee who claimed he was fired after being ordered to illegally deliver medical marijuana to military bases in Maryland.
The suit, filed in October 2019 in the U.S. District Court of the Northern Division of Maryland, alleged that Verano and VZL Staffing LLC engaged in “racial discrimination and retaliation” that violated the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. The settlement came as Verano was further expanding its footprint in Illinois and as advocates and applicants for new cannabis licenses continued to highlight the lack of diversity in the state’s increasingly profitable weed industry.