Five months before its new medical marijuana law is set to take effect, New Jersey this week moved further away from having answers to basic questions about how the law will work — specifically, who will grow the marijuana and who will dispense it.
Gov. Chris Christie’s administration had been pursuing a plan to make Rutgers University the only approved cultivator of cannabis, and to make teaching hospitals the only places where patients could get it.
But on Thursday, Rutgers announced that it would not participate for fear of losing grants from the federal government. State officials said the hospitals had the same concern.
State laws legalizing medical marijuana are at odds with federal law. The Obama administration has stopped the practice of raiding marijuana dispensaries in those states, but the Drug Enforcement Administration remains reluctant to grant permission to grow the plants, even for medical research.
“This is genuinely something we were interested in doing,” said Robert M. Goodman, the executive dean of agriculture and natural resources at Rutgers. “We have agricultural stations; we have programs in medicinally reactive plants, in chemical biology, in pharmacy. It’s a potential new crop for the state, and we’re interested in promoting the state’s economy.”
But, he added, “it just puts too much at risk,” jeopardizing research grants, contracts, student aid or other funds from Washington.
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New Jersey's brand new medical marijuana law will likely have to wait an extra 90 days before patients can start lighting up legally.
After the Administration of Governor Chris Christie said it needed more time to draft the rules and regulations that will governor the state's Alternative Treatment Centers(ATC), a key sponsor of the law has filed legislation to delay it from taking effect by three more months.
Assemblyman Reed Gusciora(D-Mercer) agreed to the delay after talks with officials at the Department of Health and Senior Services.
However, the 90 day extension in his amendment to the law is only a fraction of the six months to year delay asked for by Governor Christie.
Nonetheless, the Governor's Press Secretary, Michael Drewniak said "We appreciate the recognition that we need more time to get this done right."
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TRENTON - Patients seeking legal access to medical marijuana might have to wait 90 more days under legislation being drafted in response to a request from the Christie administration.
Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D., Union), a prime sponsor of the medical-marijuana law, said Wednesday he intends to introduce legislation Monday to grant the state an additional 90 days to implement the law, which was supposed to go into effect in July with marijuana distribution to start by October.
Christie had sought a postponement of six to 12 months to ensure that proper regulations and controls could be put in place.
Scutari said he was convinced that the health commissioner has been working on the issue and added: "I want to help them get this together so we can have a successful program without the snafus."
"I want to be reasonable. I want to give the administration the opportunity to promulgate the rules and enact a bill in a good manner, and I'm hopeful we'll continue to make progress."
The governor's spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said, "We appreciate [Scutari's] support to our request."
But medical-marijuana proponents argued against a postponement.
"We really don't think any delay is necessary," said Ken Wolski, executive director of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana in New Jersey. "We have regulations that we could suggest that are ready to go July 1, so we still don't think that a delay is necessary to implement this law."
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