N.J. ‘Big Weed’ cannabis capers may limit minorities, locals

Before recreational sales even get started, is New Jersey’s “budding” cannabis industry starting to resemble another regulated one that, too many times, has had competitors bringing out the knives against one another?

Many in South Jersey will recall an all-out war of words that developed a few years ago between Virtua Health and Cooper University hospital systems. Virtua had a growing multi-hospital footprint, while Cooper’s prestigious single acute-care hospital in Camden was the headquarters for a network of connected non-hospital properties. The parties sniped at each other, sometimes in court, over advertising claims, over which system would provide EMS transports in Camden City, and over which cardiac procedures they were authorized to perform.