NJ Senate Passes Medical Marijuana Bill
By admin at 24 February, 2009, 5:23 pm
The New Jersey state senate voted yesterday to allow state residents with serious debilitating conditions to use medical marijuana, putting the state on a path to become the 14th in the nation to legalize the drug for medicinal use.
Democrat Nicholas Scutari, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the bill is aimed to help people in need, not people who are looking for an easy high.
“We aren’t talking about thrill-seekers or drug addicts here,” said Scutari. “We are talking about very sick people who are in desperate need of relief.”
But opponents of the bill fear it is too broad and could lead to abuse. Democrat Fred Madden likened the bill to one in California, where he said patients are being prescribed marijuana for everything from premenstrual syndrome to attention deficit disorder, according to the Star-Ledger.
Although the bill passed the New Jersey senate, a similar bill in the state’s assembly would need to pass before going to the desk of governor John Corzine, who has said he would sign it.
While 13 states have legalized medical marijuana, it is still illegal under federal law, leading to a number of raids of medical marijuana facilities in California over recent weeks.
i have c.i.d.p. i have just moved back here from cali. i sure miss the relief that medical marijuana provided. i pray this law is passed quickly.
Explain this to me, how can the United States raid medical marijuana facilities that are legal in that State? Isnt there some kind of protection these producers should have? I will never understand our goverment, whats the point of even making state laws if they can just be overshadowed by federal laws
That is the utter hipocracy of the G.W. Bush regime. Fortunately Obama has stopped these raids for the time being.
With the help of some main stream media personalities like Bill Maher and John Stewart and others, we are hopefully well on our way to legalization as a whole and not just medicinally, because as we all know, it is ridiculously hipocritical to have alcohol and all these prescription drugs legal and not marijuanna.