MEDICAL MARIJUANA RULES NEED ADJUSTING

More than four distribution sites, no artificial THC caps, with
medical marijuana in New Jersey.

No doubt, Gov. Chris Christie, his health and senior services
commissioner and plenty of New Jersey residents don't want New
Jersey's allowance of marijuana for specific medical uses to open the
door to widespread, open recreational marijuana use in this state.

That is understandable. The bill our Legislature approved in January
was not intended to transform New Jersey into California, where
basically anyone who wants marijuana can easily get it.

So we know why the governor's Department of Health and Senior
Services has put forward regulations for legalized medical marijuana
use in the Garden State that are rigid. Better to err on the side of
caution and not open the door to exploitation by recreational users,
is the thinking.

While that logic is sound, the governor, Health Department
Commissioner Poonam Alaigh and other officials still need to adjust
their proposed regulations. As they're written, the rules are so
limiting that they will lead many New Jerseyans who should be able to
obtain marijuana legally to treat their debilitating pain to continue
buying it illegally.

Here's what's wrong with the proposed regulations:

Two growers and four distribution sites is simply not enough. In New
Jersey, patients who use marijuana to relieve severe pain, nausea and
other symptoms from their illnesses, won't be allowed to grow their
own marijuana for use. All 13 other states with legalized medical
marijuana allow patients to grow their own marijuana in different amounts.

If New Jersey isn't going to allow home growing of the plant, there
must be more than two registered growers. And there will certainly
need to be more than four "alternative treatment centers" where
patients can get marijuana. If a cancer patient who relies on
marijuana to relieve his chronic nausea lives in, say, Vineland, but
the closest alternative treatment center where he could purchase
medical marijuana is in Camden, that is decidedly inconvenient.

The dispensaries would be able to open satellite offices and to
provide home delivery to patients, but how much will that cost and
will these nonprofit alternative treatment centers -- already being
asked to pay a $20,000 fee to the state -- be able to afford these
added services?

Here's a suggestion for the health department: How about the state
contracts with private pharmacies to handle distribution -- if they
want the business. What businesses better know how to keep
prescription medicines secure and are accustomed to dealing with
doctors and prescriptions than pharmacies?

Whatever the solution, there are 21 counties in New Jersey and there
ought to be at least that many distribution sites around the state.

Limiting the percentage of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in medical
marijuana to less than 10 percent would, in effect, seem to be a
regulation that serves no other purpose than to weaken the marijuana
available and, as some patients who use marijuana have testified in
Trenton, essentially reduce its effectiveness as a medicine that can
blunt pain, take away nausea and clear up vision for glaucoma sufferers.

Essentially limiting the amount of marijuana (the part that counts)
in the marijuana being legalized is nowhere in the legislation and is
not what's done in other jurisdictions where medical marijuana has
been made legal. It's an overreach by politicians trying to make a
scientific decision based, at least in part, on political ideologies.

Do we want those suffering from AIDS, cancer, leukemia and other
serious conditions to have to ingest greater quantities of marijuana
more times a day because Trenton will only allowed some sort of
weakened version of the plant? No.

We understand the tight rules proposed regarding how doctors can
prescribe marijuana and how it must go through the state. We even
understand charging patients who would use the drug and the
alternative treatment centers a fee -- money that will fund all the
new state oversight.

New Jersey is trying to put in place a system that will be
exceedingly difficult for those who just want to obtain marijuana for
recreational use to abuse. That's smart.

But, these proposed rules have sparked an outpouring of criticism
from all sides in this discussion -- much of it justifiable criticism.

What good is it to legalize marijuana for those 7,000-plus estimated
New Jerseyans who depend on it as a medicine if the program's rules
are so suffocating as to make legal medical marijuana altogether
inconvenient and unfulfilling. They'll just keep growing marijuana
illegally themselves or buying it from drug dealers. What a
symbolic-yet-useless piece of legislation we would have then.