By Kara Baskin and Michael Fisch
law community
Driving a Successful Legalization Effort
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Photograph by Purty Pat
winter 2023
When Jessica Gonzalez, JD ’16, started law school in 2013, the idea of building a career in cannabis law was an extreme longshot. Although 19 states currently allow the recreational use of marijuana, far fewer had done so in 2013.
For Gonzalez, good timing, life experience, grit, and educational opportunities intersected to shift the odds in her favor. She parlayed her political experience as a cannabis legalization activist and her work as a determined student attorney into national acclaim.
As an attorney at boutique firm Hiller, PC in Midtown Manhattan, Gonzalez steers cannabis and hemp businesses through compliance, trademark protection, and state licensing issues. She’s also outside general counsel for the national organization Minorities for Medical Marijuana.
In April 2021, Gonzalez teamed up with Laury Lucien, JD ’15, an adjunct professor of cannabis law at Suffolk, to share the history of cannabis and its regulation with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) examiners and commissioners—the first ever cannabis industry presentation to that office, Gonzalez says. (Lucien, founding member of Major Bloom, a cannabis dispensary in Worcester, Massachusetts, was featured in a Winter 2020 cover story in this magazine.)
Gonzalez gained a reputation for her political savvy on cannabis issues during New Jersey’s successful ballot initiative to legalize marijuana possession and recreational use in 2020. The bill passed, thanks in part to Gonzalez’s work on a viral electoral campaign, NJ CAN 2020. She led the campaign’s social impact committee, emphasizing the social benefits of the legislation as well as the inequities of existing approaches.
At the time, Black residents in the Garden State were more than three times as likely as white residents to be charged with marijuana possession, despite similar rates of usage, according to the New York Times.
“After learning about the racial history of the criminalization of cannabis, it would have been impossible for me to sit back, legal degree in hand, and watch my community be excluded from the regulated cannabis industry,” she told the National Law Journal in 2022, when the publication named her to a shortlist of cannabis law trailblazers. In 2021, she was named to NJBIZ’s “Next Generation of Leaders” list.
Gonzalez’s advocacy at public hearings shaped cannabis policy decisions around the licensing process, particularly “on behalf of Black, Latino and other marginalized groups who are struggling to get a toehold in this fiercely competitive industry,” according to NJ.com.
Cannabis possession laws have ensnared hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system and are a massive waste of taxpayer dollars, argues Gonzalez. Each year, she says, New Jersey had arrested roughly 37,000 people and spent about $40 million to prosecute them.
Developing real-world lawyering skills at Suffolk Law
Gonzalez, who graduated Suffolk with a concentration in IP, joined the school’s IP Clinic as a 3L, fighting on behalf of a small family-owned audio speaker business, Auratone, after its trademark was taken by a large multinational music business.
The work was transformative, she says, encouraging her interest in defending small, family-owned businesses. It also taught her the importance of client management—skills like “how to speak to a client, how to manage expectations, how to package sensitive information, and how to keep the client accountable.”
“I owe much of my early success in law to the hands-on experience the IP clinic provided,” she says.
“A shield against this world”
An Ecuadorian-American who grew up in impoverished sections of Ecuador’s capital, Quito, and then in Jersey City, New Jersey, Gonzalez recalls witnessing police activity from a young age.
“I’ve been talking to police since I was six years old. I’ve seen the fights and the gunshots,” she says. “My mom very much emphasized education as my way out.”
Her childhood experiences, she says, spurred her to go into law as a way to fight for justice in her community.
“I always wanted to equip myself with knowledge,” she says. “I look at the law as a shield against this world.”
