NJ - Assembly Should OK Medical Marijuana

[Galaxy]

Assembly Should OK Medical Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on April 26, 2009 at 05:26:29 PT
Editorial
Source: Courier-Post

New Jersey -- The government shouldn't bar patients from using a substance that greatly reduces their pain.

State Attorney General Anne Milgram said last week that legislation in Trenton that would allow those suffering from AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other painful ailments to keep and grow small amounts of marijuana is workable. We're glad Milgram's mind is open on this issue and that's she's not following the same rigid and foolish hard line as the federal government.

The state Senate has already approved the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act and Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign it.

All that's needed is a vote in the state Assembly. The Assembly should do the same as the Senate and approve it.

There are tens of thousands of Americans -- not drug abusers, but people suffering real pain from life-threatening diseases -- who swear by marijuana as the best, sometimes the only, medicine that takes away their pain and nausea or restores their vision.

We don't think the government has the right to tell these people what substances they can or cannot use to take away their pain. Americans who are suffering from terminal diseases should have the freedom to use whatever works best for their symptoms and specific pains. If marijuana is what works, so be it.

The legislation in Trenton would mandate that people with debilitating conditions such as multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and other conditions register with the state Department of Health and Senior Services and obtain a special photo identification card.

Legally registered users would be allowed to possess up to six marijuana plants and an ounce of usable marijuana. They would be barred from driving while under the influence and smoking in most public areas. These restrictions could easily be enforced the same as they are today.

Heavy lobbying from several multibillion-dollar industries, including beer and liquor producers and pharmaceutical firms, has long kept marijuana classified as a Schedule I drug by the federal government. That puts it off limits for government research into its medical qualities and makes it illegal to possess in all forms and quantities.

But state governments have shown they can see things more clearly and that there can be ways to balance patients' needs with society's needs. Thirteen states have some version of a medical marijuana exception to the federal law.

We're confident such an exception can happen in New Jersey, and it should. The Assembly ought to approve this bill. Let those New Jerseyans already using marijuana to get through each day without unbearable pain stop having to hide what they do for fear of pointless prosecution.

Source: Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, NJ)
Published: April 26, 2009
Copyright: 2009 Courier-Post
URL: Assembly should OK medical marijuana | CourierPostOnline.com | Courier-Post (http://drugsense.org/url/eYhxw2IL)
Website: CourierPostOnline.com | Courier-Post | Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties news, community, entertainment, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties, New Jersey (http://www.courierpostonline.com/)
Contact: Send a Letter to the Editor | CourierPostOnline.com | Courier-Post (http://drugsense.org/url/SuuG7xhY)

[frostymcfailure]

If the assembly stalls this up pplz should see to it that none of those pro drug war clowns gets re-elected.

[Galaxy]

Coalition for Medical Marijuana - New Jersey (http://www.cmmnj.org/index.php)

[Galaxy]

MMJ Bill To Appear Before NJ Assembly Committee
Posted by CN Staff on June 01, 2009 at 14:28:41 PT
By Stephen J. Novak
Source: Express-Times

New Jersey -- The state Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee is scheduled to vote on a medical marijuana bill Thursday, according to a legislative calendar. The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act was passed by the state Senate in February by a 22-16 vote.

The committee can amend the bill and allow it to move to the full Assembly for a vote, which would move New Jersey closer to becoming the 14th state to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he will sign the bill.

Under the bill, patients suffering from life-threatening or debilitating illnesses could be qualified to use medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. Patients would need to register with the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, and would receive registration cards indicating that they are allowed to legally possess and use medical marijuana.

"Our elected officials need to pass this important legislation," said Roseanne Scotti, director of Drug Policy Alliance New Jersey, in a news release today. "New Jerseyans believe that if they or a loved one have a serious illness, and are suffering, that they should have every option for relieving that suffering."
There is some division in medical and law enforcement communities about the bill, though a majority of area police officials seem to be against it.

"Taking something that is illegal for the majority of the population and making it legal for a very small portion of the population is going to make it hard for the officer on the street," Greenwich Township Police Chief Rich Guzzo said not long after the Senate's passage. "It's going to be a courtroom nightmare."

Source: Express-Times, The (PA)
Author: Stephen J. Novak
Published: Monday June 01, 2009
Copyright: 2009 The Express-Times
URL: Medical marijuana bill to appear before New Jersey Assembly committee Thursday - lehighvalleylive.com (http://drugsense.org/url/dETdB08k)
Contact: Contact Us at lehighvalleylive.com: Lehigh Valley Real-Time News, Information and Community with The Express-Times (http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/contactus/)
Website: The Express-Times | Lehigh Valley PA Newspaper - lehighvalleylive.com (http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/expresstimes/)

[Galaxy]

Medical marijuana bill advances

By MICHAEL SYMONS â?¢ GANNETT STATE BUREAU â?¢ June 5, 2009

A plan to allow marijuana to be prescribed for medicinal use in New Jersey was advanced Thursday by an Assembly committee, after being changed to prevent people from growing the plant on their own at home.
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Supporters said patients with debilitating conditions and their doctors should have the option to turn to marijuana to relieve severe pain associated with things such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis. But there are still skeptics, including law enforcement officials, and more changes to the bill are likely.

Patients would need to qualify for a state registry and be limited to a three-month prescription.

"We want to make sure this really deals the patient and patient recovery and pain management, particularly when people are at their terminal stages in life, with wasting syndrome, with AIDS and have chronic ailments and when all other medical treatments, conventional treatments, do not work," said Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, D-Mercer.

"Should the law stand between a physician and what he or she believes is in the best interest of their patients?" said Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, R-Morris. "I don't believe it should. I believe that we can trust the physicians of this state to act responsibly. If we can't, they shouldn't be physicians."

Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini, R-Monmouth, cast the only vote against the bill, which was amended in part to address concerns she had raised. She is executive director of Prevention First, which provides substance abuse prevention education.

Angelini questioned whether the Department of Health and Senior Services and Department of Law and Public Safety would have the personnel and resources to monitor the marijuana centers, given the state's budget and staffing shortfalls.

"My concern about that is â?? everyone's complaining that there aren't enough monitors, there aren't enough folks to go out from the different departments to look at the things they're responsible for" now, Angelini said.

The committee's other two Republicans â?? Nancy Munoz, R-Union, and Vincent Polistina, R-Atlantic â?? voted to abstain. All eight committee Democrats voted for the bill.

A large number of patients with debilitating conditions testified or attended the meeting in support of the bill. But their sentiment wasn't shared by everyone.

Diane Litterer, executive director of the Lakewood-bsaed New Jersey Prevention Network, said she sympathizes with patients, having lost a 22-year-old brother to leukemia and her husband after a two-year illness. But she said the bill is dangerous.

"Crime and drug use go up in states that these bills pass," Litterer said. "These societal dangers must be considered over the perceived needs of a few."

Changes to the bill include the following:

â?? Alternative centers must be nonprofits and licensed by the state health department, with at least two centers each in the state's north, central and south.

â?? People won't be allowed to grow marijuana on their own at home; it would be cultivated and distributed in bags, not as a potted plant, at alternative centers.

â?? Caregivers who help an ailing person cannot get separate marijuana ID cards.

â?? Centers will be allowed to deliver marijuana to patients using a courier, or patients can pick up the drug from the centers.

â?? Physician recommendations will be tracked to guard against possible abuse, as controlled dangerous substances.

Because of those changes, the bill will have to return to the Senate, which in February approved the proposal 22-16.

Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, one of the bill's sponsors, said he didn't think every change made to the bill is necessary and that if it's enacted New Jersey would be the most restrictive of the 14 states allowing it. Still, he said it's progress.

"This is an opportunity for us to reach out and do some good for society, to help people that are at their very weakest and at their very worst," Scutari said.

Michael Symons: [email protected]

[Galaxy]

New Jersey wrestles with medical marijuana legislation
by Chris Megarian and Susan K. Livio/The Star-Ledger
Sunday June 07, 2009, 8:01 AM

The State Police and the New Jersey Army National Guard took to the South Jersey skies in a Black Hawk helicopter last week to train officers how to locate and bust marijuana growers.

A day later, lawmakers in Trenton approved a bill they hope, if enacted, would allow seriously ill residents to legally use marijuana for medical purposes.

The two events highlight a thorny question for New Jersey: How do you make it legal for some residents to smoke pot, while it's against the law for everyone else? Lawmakers are looking at 13 states that allow medical marijuana to make sure the legislation they pass has enough restrictions so only those who really need it can get it.

One mantra they seem to have adopted: Don't be like California.

California has been widely criticized for adopting legislation that is too lax. There, retail outlets have been selling to an estimated 200,000 registered users and have been the repeated target of federal drug enforcement raids.

New Jersey lawmakers "were very concerned about opening the floodgates, being irresponsible and allowing people who should not use this abuse this," Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), one of the sponsors of the bill, (A804), said during Thursday's Assembly Health Committee hearing. They "certainly did not want to send out the message we are encouraging illegal drug use," he said.

These concerns drove dramatic revisions:

Only people suffering from specific diseases -- AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and seizure disorders -- would be allowed to use the illegal drug. The original bill defined eligible users by their symptoms.

Only the registered patient may retrieve the drug from the grower, or, if the patient is unable to do so, a courier service could be arranged to deliver the pot to the patient's home. The original bill allowed a designated caregiver to retrieve the illegal drug on the patient's behalf.

No one would be allowed to grow their own pot. The original bill would have permitted patients to grow as many as six plants -- and possess up to one additional ounce of usable marijuana. Under the new version, patients could only get the drug -- no more than one ounce a month -- through a licensed nonprofit growing facility.

"New Jersey appears to have learned some lessons from California," said Dan Abrahamson, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance in California.

When the California law passed 13 years ago, "it gave very little guidance to anyone -- law enforcement, counties -- how to make this law work best for public safety and health," Abrahamson said. "There was some chaos that ensued."

Overnight, dispensaries operating whenever and however they wanted opened in communities that didn't want them, he said. Critics contend only a small percentage of medicinal users there have serious illnesses.

With cities and counties allowed to enact different laws, pot is sold legally from hundreds of shops in Los Angeles, and dispensaries have doctors on-site to assess patients' ills. Oakland allows people with a medical card to acquire as many as 72 plants, "for any illness for which marijuana provides relief," according to recent published reports.

RESTRICTIONS AND CONCERNS

New Jersey, on the other hand, would have the most restrictive medical marijuana law in the country, lawmakers say.

Activists worry about that.

Jim Miller, president of the New Jersey chapter of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana, said restricting which conditions can be treated with marijuana and limiting how much patients can get is like saying "We want to limit how many people we can help, and we want to limit how much we can help them."

Miller, however, added: "It's better to ensure that a bill will be passed and then work to make it better."

The changes could make the issue less politically radioactive.

On Friday, Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden), who decides which bills get posted for a vote, offered qualified support.

"The speaker has said he is open to supporting a bill that contains safeguards to ensure marijuana would be available only to those with truly legitimate medical needs and only under strict doctor supervision," said Derek Roseman, a spokesman for Assembly Democrats. "The amended bill moves closer to meeting those requirements. But other major issues, such as requiring doctor and patient education and finalizing law enforcement matters around distribution and possession, still need to be addressed."

Roberts would not post the bill for a full Assembly vote until his concerns are met, Roseman said.

Attorney General Anne Milgram also said the bill is better. "It tightens up the provisions ... that could have become loopholes by people seeking to divert marijuana for illicit purposes," said spokesman Peter Aseltine.

New Jersey is among more than a dozen states wrestling with medical marijuana legislation, said Karmen Hanson, a policy analyst for the National Council of State Legislatures. In recent weeks, bills passed the state senates in Delaware and Illinois.

Hanson said the issue is in constant flux, with some states "starting from scratch, some tinkering" and others scaling back laws. Abrahamson, of the Drug Policy Alliance in California, said this ongoing review is helpful: "It needs to be flexible and change to fit the communities' needs."

But as the training by helicopter at Fort Dix last week indicates, law enforcement is not taking a softer stance on marijuana.

Using GPS and compasses for navigation, the spotters in the sky relayed coordinates to the teams on the ground, who trekked through the woods to find the marijuana plot.

The annual haul in homegrown marijuana varies, but in good years more than 3,000 plants can be discovered and destroyed, including marijuana cultivated indoors, said Detective Sgt. William Peacock, commander of the State Police Marijuana Eradication Squad.

"That's nothing compared to California," he said, "but for our built-up state, that's a bunch of marijuana."

Staff writer Rudy Larini contributed to this report.

[gypski]

This bill was sabotogued. NJ is right there where NASDAQ is located and you can bet who the non-profit (sic) producer for the state is going to be. MMJ INC perhaps. :wtf: That and some mob fronted operation. :D

The Pine Barrens is a great place to grow. The Jersey devil keeps out the creeps!!!! :jointsmile: