Pubdate: Wed, 30 Jun 2010
Source: Trentonian, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2010 The Trentonian
Contact:  http://www.trentonian.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006
Author: Jeff Edelstein

THE SICK SUFFER AS NJ LEGISLATURE DELAYS MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Well, first things first: Way to backpedal on your own legislation,
you numbnuts. I am speaking specifically about the state Legislature
deciding to postpone, by three months, New Jersey's medical marijuana
program.

In simple terms, this means cancer patients, glaucoma sufferers, MS
patients, and the rest of the people who can benefit from medical
marijuana will continue to be either be (A) not helped or (B) criminals.

Well done, Legislature, well done.

As to the "why" for the delay, it all pretty much comes down to state
control over the law. Basically, who gets to grow and sell the weed
for the sick to smoke.

Gov. Chris Christie wants tight oversight on the legal grass. If it
were up to him - and something tells me, when all is said and done, it
just might be - hospitals would dispense it and Rutgers University
would grow it.

And the sound you just heard was thousands of Rutgers University
students dropping their bongs in disbelief. I mean really - back in
the day, if I found out my university was going to be in charge of
growing the primo bud, I'd have been all like, "Whoa, dude. Cool." (By
the way, we have about as many words for "marijuana" as Eskimos do for
"snow." Just wanted to point that out.)

To be clear, I believe marijuana should simply be legalized. By doing
so, we'd create a new tax revenue, eliminate heaven knows how many
criminal enterprises, and realize, once and for all, that pot just
isn't what the fearmongers would have you believe.

Fearmongers like - irony alert! - Rutgers University.

Here's the link for you - http://health.rutgers.edu/brochures/marijuana.htm
- - and it demonstrates a bit of a disconnect between Rutgers official
stance on weed, courtesy of the Office of the Vice President for
Student Affairs, and the possibility Rutgers is going to become Pot
U.

According to the document - which I'll dub "Rutgers Reefer Madness" -
smoking marijuana can "ruin your looks." It can also lead to
"extinguished sexual pleasure." You also cannot "function normally and
cannot do everyday activities which require concentration" when under
the influence of marijuana. Furthermore, smoking dope "increases the
likelihood of unsafe sex."

I would like to state, for the record, that when I smoked pot - which
I haven't done in a decade - it most certainly did not "increase the
likelihood of unsafe sex" for me. Nor did it, for that matter,
increase the likelihood of "safe sex," "sex," or "members of the
opposite sex acknowledging my existence." If smoking pot did any of
those things, I would have been high 25 hours a day, 12 days a week.

What pot does do, however, is provide relief for a handful of medical
conditions.

Good thing our Legislature has gone and prevented that from happening
for at least another three months.

One day, probably in most of our lifetimes, today's pot laws are going
to look as silly and misguided as alcohol prohibition, and all the
hand-wringing about who can grow it and who can use it and who can
sell it are going to look like so much hot air.

Today, presidents joke about their past pot use while politicians pass
laws to put marijuana users in prison.

And all the while, people who might actually benefit from the use of
marijuana are sick and getting sicker.

Brilliant.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake