NEW JERSEY WRESTLES WITH MEDICAL MARIJUANA LEGISLATION

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."