From Stigma to Storefront: Inside South Jersey’s Changing Cannabis Culture

EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP — Some customers walk confidently through the doors of a South Jersey cannabis dispensary knowing the strain, product and experience they want.

Others are still nervous about walking through the door at all.

That contrast says a lot about how rapidly New Jersey's relationship with marijuana has changed since recreational cannabis sales began in 2022.

Romeo Dilla, New Jersey wholesale manager for Brute's Roots, says part of his job in today's legal cannabis industry involves something that would have seemed unusual not long ago: reassuring customers that what they're doing is perfectly legal.

"They walk in actually a little bit nervous," Dilla said. "Not really sure if what they're doing is legal, but obviously it is."

Dilla discussed the changing cannabis industry during a recent appearance on The AC Mike Lopez Show on WOND, offering a look at both sides of the business — from customers tentatively entering a dispensary for the first time to the highly technical cultivation process taking place long before a product reaches the shelf.

For Dilla, who says he has spent roughly a decade working professionally in cannabis, the transformation has been years in the making.

"This is a passion, something that's been a life calling for me," Dilla said.

From an Underground Product to a Retail Business

Dilla's experience in the industry has included large-scale outdoor hemp cultivation, indoor growing, dispensaries and now wholesale sales.

"I like to say we've done it all," he said.

What's changed most dramatically is the environment surrounding the product.

New Jersey voters approved recreational marijuana legalization in 2020, and legal recreational sales began in April 2022. What followed was the development of a regulated industry in which cannabis is grown, manufactured, packaged and sold through licensed businesses.

But laws can change faster than attitudes.

Dilla said some people entering dispensaries today still carry the apprehension created by decades in which purchasing marijuana could result in an arrest.

That means customer education has become an important part of the retail cannabis business.

"Every single customer that goes in there doesn't necessarily know exactly what they want," Dilla said.

Instead, customers may explain what types of products they prefer or want to avoid. The conversation can then turn to the various forms in which cannabis is sold.

For Dilla, answering those questions is an important part of closing the knowledge gap that still exists around a relatively young legal industry.

"That's a huge proponent to filling the gap of a sale," Dilla said, "helping them understand what they actually don't know that they need."

A Different Kind of Customer

AC Mike Lopez noted during the interview that the customers he has observed at the Brute's Roots Egg Harbor Township location don't necessarily fit outdated stereotypes about marijuana users.

Dilla agreed that today's cannabis consumer is difficult to categorize.

Some arrive already knowledgeable about cannabis. Others are first-time or relatively inexperienced customers trying to understand products that can differ significantly from the marijuana they may remember from decades ago.

That evolution is one reason Dilla places such a heavy emphasis on education.

He said his own interest began long before New Jersey legalized recreational cannabis. Knowing the legal landscape could eventually change, Dilla pursued agriculture as a foundation for entering the cultivation business.

He said his professional experience over the past decade has ranged from outdoor hemp operations to sophisticated indoor cultivation systems.

Later in the interview, Dilla described his involvement with cannabis more broadly as a commitment spanning more than 20 years.

"I've studied the ins and out in the way that the plant affects the body, the way the plant affects the environment," Dilla said. "The whole broad spectrum, it's definitely been a life commitment for me for sure."

Behind the Dispensary Counter Is an Agricultural Operation

While customers see packaged products on a dispensary shelf, Dilla's description of what happens behind the scenes sounds more like a combination of agriculture, manufacturing and research.

Brute's Roots uses several cultivation methods, he said.

"We have full sun exposure grows. We have greenhouse grows and we have full LED indoor grows," Dilla said.

Indoor cannabis cultivation requires workers to operate in carefully controlled environments designed to provide the conditions the plants need.

Those grow rooms can be hot and humid.

"It feels like Florida," Dilla said. "Dead winter, New Jersey, you walk into a grow room — it feels like Florida — and you walk outside and you're reminded you're in Jersey."

Dilla said Brute's Roots is also vertically integrated, with the operation involved in cultivation, extraction and production of products including gummies.

But one of the more interesting parts of the process happens well before a particular cannabis variety becomes a regular product.

It's called phenotype hunting, often shortened to "pheno hunting."

Hunting for the Right Plant

Dilla explained the process with a comparison most people can understand.

Imagine parents with five children.

Those children share genetics, but they don't all look or behave exactly alike.

Cannabis plants grown from seeds of the same strain can similarly exhibit different characteristics.

"You get five seeds from this one strain," Dilla explained. "All those seeds are not gonna come out to be this exact same-looking plant."

Growers cultivate multiple plants and evaluate them for the traits they're seeking.

Dilla said those characteristics can include flavor, size, aroma and the length of the growing cycle.

Once growers identify the plant displaying the preferred combination of characteristics, that genetic profile can be preserved and replicated through cloning.

"You plant all those and you pick the best one out of all the seeds," Dilla said, "and you keep replicating that genetic profile over and over through cloning, and next thing you know, it's on our shelf."

The process can require considerable time and resources because plants being evaluated during research and development don't necessarily become products that can be sold.

"There's a lot of resources dumped in and a lot of wasted plant material because you're only going for R&D here," Dilla said.

The result, he said, is the ability to develop specific strains and genetic profiles associated with the company's own cultivation operation.

Education Replacing Some of the Stigma

The interview also touched extensively on the use of cannabis for health and wellness, including discussions of stress, anxiety and sleep.

Dilla spoke about his own experiences and beliefs surrounding cannabis, while Lopez discussed his personal experience using cannabis products for sleep.

Those experiences are anecdotal, and consumers considering cannabis for medical reasons should discuss their individual circumstances with a qualified health care professional. Cannabis products can have different effects and risks, and retail cannabis professionals are not substitutes for medical providers.

But the broader discussion illustrated something significant about the cultural shift surrounding marijuana.

People who once may have been reluctant to even acknowledge using cannabis can now walk into a licensed New Jersey business and openly ask questions about it.

Dilla believes education is critical to continuing that transition.

For him, that can mean explaining how a product was grown, the differences among the various forms available or simply reassuring an apprehensive customer that purchasing cannabis from a licensed dispensary is legal.

It's a remarkable change for an industry that barely existed legally in New Jersey a few years ago.

The transformation is visible on the Black Horse Pike in Egg Harbor Township, where a customer can now walk through the doors of a licensed cannabis dispensary and have a conversation with an employee about a product that was once largely confined to an underground market.

Some customers still walk through those doors nervously.

Increasingly, though, they're walking through them.