NJ S.4635 Hemp Bill Passes Senate as S.4287 Fines Advance

The New Jersey Senate voted 37-0 on October 22 to pass Senate Bill 4635 (S.4635), which would let liquor and cannabis licensees keep selling intoxicating hemp beverages past the state’s current November 13 cutoff and until the new federal hemp definition takes effect, a date the bill sets at no earlier than December 11, 2026. The bill leaves New Jersey’s ban on online sales of hemp-derived products exactly as it stands.

A week earlier, on October 15, the Senate Judiciary Committee reported S.4635 favorably along with Senate Bill 4287 (S.4287), which would make unlicensed commercial sales of marijuana and vapor products a third-degree crime carrying fines of $10,000 to $250,000. Cannabis Business Times reported that both committee votes were unanimous. S.4287 has not reached the Senate floor.

What S.4635 would change

Senator Nicholas P. Scutari, who represents District 22 in Somerset and Union counties, introduced S.4635 on October 1. Its target is timing. Congress rewrote the federal definition of hemp in November 2025 through section 781 of Public Law 119-37, and New Jersey wrote November 13, 2026 into its own law to match. Then Public Law 119-103, signed September 2, limited the federal change until December 11 to a narrow set of products. According to the committee statement, hemp products with cannabinoids that a cannabis plant cannot produce naturally become marijuana under federal law on November 13, while most others stay legal federally until at least December 11.

Rather than swap one fixed date for another, the bill text replaces November 13 with a “federal compliance date,” defined as December 11, 2026 or the day the federal definition takes effect, whichever is later. The text adds that the date “shall not be earlier than December 11, 2026” even if a federal appropriation or continuing resolution lapses. The committee statement explains the reasoning: the approach is meant “to accommodate potential further federal delays,” and “the sale of hemp products by ABC and CRC licensees will remain legal until the federal definitional changes become effective.” ABC is the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, and CRC is the Cannabis Regulatory Commission.

The Office of Legislative Services filed a fiscal estimate on October 26 calling the revenue effect indeterminate, because the bill’s dates depend on when, or whether, the federal change arrives. As of October 27, the Legislature’s bill history showed no Assembly action. S.4635 needs Assembly passage and the governor’s signature before any of it applies.

What New Jersey law already says about online hemp sales

The online rules come from P.L.2025, c.215, which Governor Phil Murphy signed on January 12, 2026, as revised by P.L.2026, c.7, which Governor Mikie Sherrill signed on March 30. The Cannabis Regulatory Commission’s interim FAQ on intoxicating hemp lists what the law prohibited immediately, including “selling, offering to sell, or distributing any hemp-derived product or intoxicating hemp beverage online.”

The same FAQ says that since April 13, 2026, products exceeding 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, along with synthesized cannabinoids, fall under New Jersey’s cannabis laws rather than its hemp rules. Selling any product with a detectable amount of THC to a person under 21 is also prohibited.

S.4635 reprints the online provision without changing a word: “It shall be unlawful to sell, offer for sale, or distribute any intoxicating hemp beverage or any hemp-derived cannabinoid product through online retail sale.” The extension it offers runs to licensed liquor wholesalers and retailers and licensed cannabis retailers. Out-of-state brands that ship to consumers get nothing new.

What S.4287 would add for unlicensed sellers

S.4287, sponsored by Scutari and Senator Anthony M. Bucco of District 25, was introduced May 14 and sent to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee after the October 15 vote. According to its committee statement, anyone who owns, operates, controls, manages, or maintains a business that sells marijuana without a license would be guilty of a third-degree crime, with a fine of $10,000 to $50,000. For a partnership, corporation, or other legal entity, the fine would be $100,000 to $250,000.

The same penalties would apply to retail sales of vapor products by anyone other than a licensed vapor business or a licensed limited vapor product retailer. Both offenses would be added to the definition of racketeering activity under New Jersey’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, opening the door to additional criminal and civil penalties.

The bill also sets a graded schedule for selling or giving away flavored vapor products, from a petty disorderly persons offense for fewer than five units up to a second-degree crime for 500 units or more. Products sold in violation would be treated as prima facie contraband that police could seize without a warrant. A business with more than two violations in two years would be deemed a public nuisance, giving its municipality power to restrict or close it.

If S.4287 becomes law, a New Jersey vapor license would carry far more weight in a vape retailer’s paperwork, including the files it hands to Tower Payments or another payment provider, since retail sales without one would become a third-degree crime.

Who spoke at the committee hearing

Cannabis Business Times reported that Todd Johnson, executive director of the New Jersey Cannabis Trade Association, testified against S.4635, arguing that lawmakers move quickly for liquor stores and hemp sellers while licensed cannabis operators wait. “A one-month extension on a looming federal ban is not worth fighting,” he said, according to the publication, while asking the Legislature “to recognize the disparity in how urgency is applied.”

Eric Blomgren, executive director of the New Jersey Energy Marketers Group, which represents convenience stores and gas stations, backed S.4287. “These new penalties are tough but fair,” he told the committee, as quoted by Cannabis Business Times.

What the bills mean for online hemp and CBD sellers

For a brand that sells hemp products online, the date in S.4635 matters less than the sentence it left alone. Even with a CBD-friendly merchant account placed through Organic Payment Gateways or another provider, a store has no path under either bill to take online hemp orders from New Jersey, because the CRC reads current law as banning those sales and S.4635 carries the ban forward unchanged.

The December 11 federal date still governs other parts of the operation, from lab reports to carrier rules, as EC4IM covered in its reports on UPS’s new total THC paperwork for raw hemp and state hemp cart blocks in Missouri and Illinois. New Jersey’s own ban on online sales has no such date attached.

Where the New Jersey hemp bills stand

S.4635 has cleared the Senate and would move New Jersey’s hemp beverage cutoff from November 13 to a federal compliance date no earlier than December 11, protecting sales by liquor and cannabis licensees only. S.4287, still in the Senate budget committee, would turn unlicensed marijuana and vapor sales into third-degree crimes with fines reaching $250,000 for companies. Neither bill touches the CRC’s reading that online sales of hemp-derived products are already illegal in the state, so the open questions are how the Assembly handles both measures and whether federal dates move again.

New Jersey Senate Passes Bill Tying Licensed Hemp Sales to the Federal Date as Online Ban Stays