Pubdate: Tue, 23 Nov 2010
Source: Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, NJ)
Copyright: 2010 Courier-Post
Contact:  http://www.courierpostonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/826
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

MEDICAL MARIJUANA RULES NEED ADJUSTING

More than four distribution sites, no artificial THC caps, with 
medical marijuana in New Jersey.

No doubt, Gov. Chris Christie, his health and senior services 
commissioner and plenty of New Jersey residents don't want New 
Jersey's allowance of marijuana for specific medical uses to open the 
door to widespread, open recreational marijuana use in this state.

That is understandable. The bill our Legislature approved in January 
was not intended to transform New Jersey into California, where 
basically anyone who wants marijuana can easily get it.

So we know why the governor's Department of Health and Senior 
Services has put forward regulations for legalized medical marijuana 
use in the Garden State that are rigid. Better to err on the side of 
caution and not open the door to exploitation by recreational users, 
is the thinking.

While that logic is sound, the governor, Health Department 
Commissioner Poonam Alaigh and other officials still need to adjust 
their proposed regulations. As they're written, the rules are so 
limiting that they will lead many New Jerseyans who should be able to 
obtain marijuana legally to treat their debilitating pain to continue 
buying it illegally.

Here's what's wrong with the proposed regulations:

Two growers and four distribution sites is simply not enough. In New 
Jersey, patients who use marijuana to relieve severe pain, nausea and 
other symptoms from their illnesses, won't be allowed to grow their 
own marijuana for use. All 13 other states with legalized medical 
marijuana allow patients to grow their own marijuana in different amounts.

If New Jersey isn't going to allow home growing of the plant, there 
must be more than two registered growers. And there will certainly 
need to be more than four "alternative treatment centers" where 
patients can get marijuana. If a cancer patient who relies on 
marijuana to relieve his chronic nausea lives in, say, Vineland, but 
the closest alternative treatment center where he could purchase 
medical marijuana is in Camden, that is decidedly inconvenient.

The dispensaries would be able to open satellite offices and to 
provide home delivery to patients, but how much will that cost and 
will these nonprofit alternative treatment centers -- already being 
asked to pay a $20,000 fee to the state -- be able to afford these 
added services?

Here's a suggestion for the health department: How about the state 
contracts with private pharmacies to handle distribution -- if they 
want the business. What businesses better know how to keep 
prescription medicines secure and are accustomed to dealing with 
doctors and prescriptions than pharmacies?

Whatever the solution, there are 21 counties in New Jersey and there 
ought to be at least that many distribution sites around the state.

Limiting the percentage of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in medical 
marijuana to less than 10 percent would, in effect, seem to be a 
regulation that serves no other purpose than to weaken the marijuana 
available and, as some patients who use marijuana have testified in 
Trenton, essentially reduce its effectiveness as a medicine that can 
blunt pain, take away nausea and clear up vision for glaucoma sufferers.

Essentially limiting the amount of marijuana (the part that counts) 
in the marijuana being legalized is nowhere in the legislation and is 
not what's done in other jurisdictions where medical marijuana has 
been made legal. It's an overreach by politicians trying to make a 
scientific decision based, at least in part, on political ideologies.

Do we want those suffering from AIDS, cancer, leukemia and other 
serious conditions to have to ingest greater quantities of marijuana 
more times a day because Trenton will only allowed some sort of 
weakened version of the plant? No.

We understand the tight rules proposed regarding how doctors can 
prescribe marijuana and how it must go through the state. We even 
understand charging patients who would use the drug and the 
alternative treatment centers a fee -- money that will fund all the 
new state oversight.

New Jersey is trying to put in place a system that will be 
exceedingly difficult for those who just want to obtain marijuana for 
recreational use to abuse. That's smart.

But, these proposed rules have sparked an outpouring of criticism 
from all sides in this discussion -- much of it justifiable criticism.

What good is it to legalize marijuana for those 7,000-plus estimated 
New Jerseyans who depend on it as a medicine if the program's rules 
are so suffocating as to make legal medical marijuana altogether 
inconvenient and unfulfilling. They'll just keep growing marijuana 
illegally themselves or buying it from drug dealers. What a 
symbolic-yet-useless piece of legislation we would have then.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom