Pubdate: Sat, 11 Feb 2012
Source: Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
Copyright: 2012 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.northjersey.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: Jeffrey S. Pollack

GOING NOWHERE ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Jeffrey Pollack is a physician who practices in Atlantic
County.

MARY E. O'Dowd, commissioner of the state Department of Health and
Senior Services, attempted to defend the state's actions, or lack
thereof, in "Medicinal pot program must be done right" (Other Views,
Jan. 25).

However, the original plan, designed to be a serious and legitimate
medically driven plan to benefit a narrow list of qualified patients,
based on science and medical consensus, has so far failed to deliver.

I agree the DHSS needs to proceed cautiously. However, the two-year
delay is not "cautiously proceeding"; it is seriously impeding
implementation of the law. This is unacceptable.

In two full years not one patient has benefited from medical cannabis.
Not one patient has registered. Not one patient has even been able to
apply to register. No physician has authorized a single
"prescription."

Two years have passed, and a patient of mine is going to prison for
five years for self-medicating in treating his documented multiple
sclerosis.

Two years after the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act was signed
into law, we have an enforcement-led barrier to medical marijuana
instead of access to physician-supervised, safe, legal access to a
viable medical treatment.

I do not belittle the capabilities or public service of O' Dowd and
John O'Brien, director of the plan and a retired New Jersey state
police officer. But neither is a physician, as were the authors of the
program, Susan Walsh and Poonam Alaigh. The key administrators of a
medical cannabis program should be physicians, public health masters
or some other qualified medical personnel -- not former state police
officers.

After all, this program is about the health of those who are caring
for, or are themselves, someone who is sick.

Furthermore, the wording of the regulations have stubbornly resisted
hardly a tweak to address essential flaws in the program. For example,
the state's 10 percent limit on tetrahydrocannabinol strains and its
limit on biodiversity are unscientific, unhealthy and arbitrary
restrictions.

The only thing the DHSS has done promptly was to select the six
alternative treatment centers. Now, the state is doing background
checks. But how long does that take? What has the DHSS found so far?
Why weren't the bona fides ascertained before the selection process?
Transparency has been deficient.

Only one ATC is "nearing completion." But none has started yet, none
has plants in cultivation, none has seedlings growing and none has
patients to serve.

Had the DHSS originally chosen ATC applications from organizations
more heavily vested in their community then perhaps the vetting
process would have been completed by now and more ATC operators would
be ready.

Medical conditions that would be eligible for treatment with medical
marijuana are defined too narrowly. They are too restrictive and fail
to consider up-to-date science and even a cautious medical consensus.
Inclusion of additional indications was supposed to begin two years
after the law was written. Well, two years have passed.

I see a small number of patients for whom use of medical marijuana
would be appropriate; however, they do not have the few clinical
conditions that allow safe access. Some of these patients have
serious, debilitating chronic pain. Others have psychiatric illness,
such as post-traumatic stress disorder. How does a
physician-prescriber approach these patients? Are they to be helped?
Or shall the state obstruct their care?

Well, the answer to that dilemma is straightforward.

Who's in charge of the program? 
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.