New Jersey has approved a bill that would make it the 14th US state to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for patients suffering from cancer and other debilitating diseases.

The legislation passed the State assembly by 48 votes to 6 with one abstention. The measure already cleared the state Senate, which voted by 25 to 13 to approve restrictions in the Assembly version, including a list of ailments for which the drug can be prescribed and a prohibition on the growing of marijuana by patients.

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TRENTON -- A plan to allow marijuana to be prescribed in New Jersey for medicinal purposes is on the verge of becoming law, following votes in both houses of the Legislature on the last day of its two-year session Monday.

The Assembly voted 48-14 in favor of the bill and the Senate voted for the bill 25-13.

"We have learned from other states' mistakes. We have put so many safeguards and so many difficulties to get it, that you can rest assured and sleep well that this will not do anything but help sick people," Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, said.

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State lawmakers will wrap up the lame-duck session today with a lengthy to-do list that includes legalizing medical marijuana, giving tuition breaks to illegal immigrant college students, and allowing chiropractors to do more than make spinal adjustments.

The 2008-09 legislative session will expire at noon tomorrow, and with it any measure not passed by both houses.

The Senate and Assembly will take up nearly 100 bills in their respective houses. Lawmakers predict a marathon session, but they say it won't rival some from years past.

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While there have been studies showing that marijuana can shrink cancerous tumors, medical marijuana is essentially a palliative drug. If a doctor recommends marijuana to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy and it helps him or her feel better, then it's working. In the end, medical marijuana is a quality-of-life issue best left to patients and their doctors ("Medical marijuana, pension pay on docket in lame-duck session," Jan. 4).

Drug warriors waging war on non-corporate drugs contend that organic marijuana is not an effective health intervention. Their prescribed intervention for medical marijuana patients is handcuffs, jail cells and criminal records. This heavy-handed approach suggests that drug warriors should not be dictating health-care decisions. It's long past time to let doctors decide what is right for their patients; sick patients should not be jailed ("Split drug verdict for champion of marijuana," Dec. 18), for daring to seek relief through medical marijuana.

Robert Sharpe,

Washington, D.C.

The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy (csdp.org).

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RED BANK (Monmouth County, NJ) - Even after spending more than $50 billion a year on the drug war, drugs are more available and drug cartels are more wealthy than ever before according to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) website.

SSDP mission statement is an international grassroots network of students who are concerned about the impact drug abuse has on our communities, but who also know that the war on drugs is failing our generation and our society.

SSDP will hold a free screening of the award-winning documentary, "The Union: The Business Behind Getting High" and host speakers Jim Miller, a medical marijuana patient's advocate and director of the non-profit, "Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey" whose late wife suffered from multiple sclerosis.

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People busted for some drug offenses near schools should no longer face mandatory prison sentences, lawmakers decided yesterday.

Assembly members voted 46-30 to send the bill (A2762) to the governor's desk for final approval.

The state has imposed mandatory prison terms of one to three years for people caught dealing drugs within 1,000 feet of a school since 1987.

"The mandatory minimum sentencing the zones require has effectively created two different sentences for the same crime, depending on where an individual lives," Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Mercer) said. "This is geographic discrimination at its most basic."

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TRENTON -- State judges are on the verge of getting back the authority to waive enhanced prison sentences now required for selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school under legislation approved Thursday and sent to Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

The bill also could free some nonviolent offenders from state prisons.

Backers of the change, including state and county prosecutors, say the often three-year mandatory prison term now required should be changed because offenders in prison learn to become hardened criminals when drug treatment could be more effective. They also note that it costs nearly $40,000 a year to house a prison inmate, while parole, probation and drug treatment programs cost significantly less.

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State lawmakers return to Trenton today to close out a lame-duck session with debate on bills to legalize medical marijuana, relax prison sentences for some drug offenders in school zones and allow towns to stave off property tax hikes by postponing pension payments.

Although chances are dwindling for Democrats to enact laws before Republican Gov.-elect Chris Christie takes office Jan. 19, lawmakers said most of their grand plans -- with the exception of medical marijuana -- have fizzled, many with gut-checks over the state's fiscal crisis. In addition, the transition from Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine to Christie has focused more on Corzine's nominations of allies to state entities than last-minute legislative moves.

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Editor, The Item

As a member of the Governor's Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, the Millburn Municipal Alliance Committee for Drug Awareness, or M-MAC, has been asked to educate our community about the issue of making marijuana legal for medical purposes. The New Jersey Assembly will soon vote on bill A-804, The Compassionate Use of Medical Marijuana Act, which would allow people 18 years of age and older the use of one ounce of unrefined marijuana for medical benefit in the State of New Jersey even though this law would go against federal law. M-MAC, as a substance abuse prevention organization for the past 20 years, has a great deal of reservation about the efficacy of this legislation. Our reasons are as follows:

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I'd like to tell George Will about one of those marijuana "customers" he denigrates in his column, "Rocky Mountain High" (Dec. 11). Tim DaGiau is a full-time college student in Colorado, and he frequents the medical marijuana dispensaries there. Tim suffers from chronic seizures. He has undergone five brain surgeries and has been put on a dozen anti-seizure medications over the years. Tim continued to have seizures while solely on prescription medications, despite the surgeries.

Then Tim tried marijuana, and miraculously, the seizures stopped. He continues to use marijuana, with his doctor's recommendation, every day in Colorado, where it is legal for him to do so. Now Tim is seizure-free. He is 20 years old and he looks like a typical college student. In fact, if George Will saw Tim walking into a medical marijuana clinic, Will would be certain that Tim just wanted to smoke pot. The truth is that marijuana is a remarkably safe and effective agent for a wide variety of medical conditions. It is not surprising that patients who have access to therapeutic marijuana appear healthy.

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NEWARK -- Safe sex and sanitary drug use are not subjects most people expect to hear about in church, but in Newark, where one in 47 people have HIV/AIDS, one woman is urging local pastors to put aside their discomfort and start using the pulpit to preach about AIDS prevention.

"We talk about basic HIV transmission and the role the congregation can play in stemming the epidemic," said Deloris Dockery, who is HIV positive and heads the program "One Conversation," a part of the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation.

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FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP -- A multiple sclerosis patient held up as a symbol of the medical marijuana movement in New Jersey was cleared of the most serious charge against him today, with jurors finding the man's backyard pot plants didn't amount to a big-time drug operation.

But John Ray Wilson, 37, could still face significant prison time under the split verdict reached by a jury in Somerville. While Wilson was acquitted of operating a drug-manufacturing facility, a first-degree crime that carries a potential 20-year sentence, jurors found him guilty of second-degree manufacturing and third-degree drug possession. He now faces five to 10 years in prison.

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Most drug dealers in Camden probably have no idea what the acronym HIDTA stands for until they're face down on a street corner in handcuffs.

Since 1995, the Philadelphia-Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) joint task force has been combatting violent drug activity in the city and its surrounding suburbs with a unique lineup of local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies.

Come January, the Drug Enforcement Administration, an agency that sources say has been conspicuously absent from Camden's HIDTA initiative for years, will take over day-to-day operations from the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, the agency that has run the initiative there almost since its inception.

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Most families in this country have lost a loved one to cancer, and while each experience is different, most share some characteristics, especially if the loved one undergoes chemotherapy.

In my family, my mother and father both died of lung cancer. My mother smoked for almost 50 years, but gave it up when she was diagnosed. My father never could quit and was sneaking cigarettes until a few days before his death.

Both made decisions early on that they would go out fighting and would subject themselves to any treatment available, no matter the dramatic nature of the side effects.

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If you want to watch a trial where the defendant has no moral culpability, is prevented from testifying truthfully and where the prosecution distorts an otherwise reasonable law beyond all rationality, you can see one this month right in Somerville. John Wilson, a multiple sclerosis patient treating himself with home-grown marijuana, is charged with operating a drug manufacturing facility. There is no charge, nor any evidence whatsoever, that he supplied or intended to supply marijuana to anyone but himself.

An individual with no prior record growing marijuana plants for home use should be eligible for pre-trial intervention; but this case is being handled by the state's Organized Crime/Gangs Unit. Wilson refused to plead guilty and accept several years in prison (a potential death sentence), so the state is seeking the maximum 20-year sentence. To justify its "manufacturing" charge, the state determined that every day a plant grew constituted a separate offense. It matters not a whit that the statute (N.J.S.A.2C:35-1.1 et seq.) is intended to combat drug distribution chains and those who pose the greatest danger to society. It ignores a statutory intent focused on harm to victims and the actor's role in a drug distribution network. Section 4 of the statute even excludes coverage where an individual is compounding or preparing the substance for his own use.

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State lawmakers should pass bill whose time has come.

With the state Legislature back in session following elections, a variety of bills are up for consideration. One that we think ought to be afforded priority status would allow patients suffering from debilitating, painful ailments to use medical marijuana without the fear of being arrested.

Thirteen states allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. It's value as a pain-reliever has been clearly established. Hundreds of thousands of people suffering from a wide range of diseases, everything from AIDS and cancer to glaucoma, swear by marijuana, that it relieves constant pain, makes nausea go away, prevents seizures and helps clear up cloudy vision.

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To the Editor:

David Evans is clearly mistaken about medical marijuana is his letter, "Marijuana: not medicine."

Evans said that "virtually all New Jersey medical organizations oppose" the N.J. Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act.

In 2002, the N.J. State Nurses Association adopted a resolution that recognized the therapeutic value and safety of medically recommended marijuana and urged the governor and state Legislature to move expeditiously to make medical marijuana legally available to residents who can benefit from it. The NJSNA has consistently testified in support of medical marijuana.

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New Jersey is poised to become the next state to allow residents to use marijuana, when recommended by a doctor, for relief from serious diseases and medical conditions.

The state Senate has approved the bill and the state Assembly is expected to follow. The legislation would then head to the governor's office for his signature.

Gov. Jon Corzine, the Democrat who lost his re-election bid this month, has indicated he would sign the bill if it reaches his desk before he leaves office in January. It would likely be one of Mr. Corzine's last acts before relinquishing the job to Republican Chris Christie.

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Law Called Discriminatory

TRENTON -- Lawmakers are close to giving judges to ability to waive enhanced prison sentences now mandated for selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, and the change could free some nonviolent offenders from incarceration.

Backers of the change say eliminating the often three-year mandatory prison term would be fair, given that 19 of 20 people sentenced under the law are black or Latino because far more area in dense cities is covered. And they say it would save the state much-needed cash, with almost one in five inmates now serving mandatory drug sentences.

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A Paterson man was sentenced to 23 years in state prison Friday for killing a drug dealer who he owed $1,200 because he feared the dealer was out to kill him first.

Damian Anderson, 30, will have to serve 85 percent of his term under sentencing imposed by state Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Reddin in Paterson. He previously pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in connection with the shooting.

Anderson was originally charged with murder in the Aug. 16, 2007, killing of 30-year-old city resident Anroy Carnegie on 11th Avenue near East 28th Street in Paterson.

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