DELAY IS MORE SMOKE

STOP BLOWING smoke. It's time to inhale.

Cancer patients, people with AIDS, victims of Lou Gehrig's disease and
others have waited long enough. They were supposed to be allowed to
smoke medical marijuana starting in October. Thirteen other states
already allow it, and New Jersey became the 14th back in January, when
the Legislature passed the nation's strictest law and then-Gov. Jon
Corzine signed it.

But then Governor Christie pushed back the start date to January 2011,
in a move befitting a prosecutor, because he wanted "to do it the
right way," his spokesman said.

The right way meant Rutgers University should oversee growing it and
16 teaching hospitals should sell it, to tightly control the process.
But Rutgers officials said last week that the school could not risk
losing more than $500 million in federal funding to grow medical
marijuana. The university was not convinced that its new career as a
marijuana farmer would be liability-free.

The university-hospital axis might have looked like a good plan on
paper, but it was not a good plan in reality. The University of
Mississippi is the only state school approved by the federal
government to grow marijuana, and the crops are produced solely for
research. It is a federal crime to possess, sell, smoke or eat
marijuana. Unless a university gets an ironclad promise the feds will
overlook its illegal activities, it takes a huge risk sanctioning them.

Why the state had to go down this road is a mystery. New Jersey's
medical marijuana law already has provisions for establishing
non-profit alternative treatment centers throughout the state to grow
and provide medicinal marijuana. Unlike Rutgers, these centers are not
in danger of losing federal funding. And other states have made
similar arrangements.

In response to Rutgers' decision last week, Christie's spokesman said,
"... as we've said all along, we've been considering other options
beyond the Rutgers plan."

Stop. The option is right here, in the law. New Jersey has wasted too
much time already. It must not ask for yet another extension, and it
must not flop around looking for alternatives. Lack of a concrete plan
at this late date is torture to people desperate to ease their
suffering, as is worrying that the law will be delayed.

These false starts are inhumane. The medical marijuana law was written
to ease, not create, pain. Enact it as originally written.