I live in New Jersey and if you read national reports you see my state listed as one of many “new” medical marijuana states, along with Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
You’d think the medical marijuana revolution is gaining territory. Yay—we’re winning!
But you’d be wrong about that. People in Colorado, California, Oregon and Washington have real marijuana freedom.
Here in the Eastern United States, these new medical marijuana laws are a big, fat, sick joke. Here’s what I mean…
These Medical Marijuana Laws Don’t Even Allow You to Grow!
The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act (NJCUMMA) was signed into law by the former governor in early 2010. So far it’s done almost nothing to give us the right to grow, have, provide, and purchase medical marijuana with no government interference.
This is still Jersey Shore, not mile-high Denver marijuana store. You find casinos serving booze, cigarettes, and hookers here in Jersey, but no marijuana shops.
Here’s how useless New Jersey’s medical marijuana law is: You can’t grow your own marijuana. You can only have a couple of ounces. The law told New Jersey government officials to create a system so authorized patients could get marijuana from state-approved marijuana sellers. But it hasn’t happened. We either risk prison by growing our own or buying street marijuana, or we do without.
You can’t qualify to be a medical marijuana patient in New Jersey just because you benefit medically from marijuana and have a doctor who says so. You also have to be on the government’s narrow list of “approved conditions.”
You can’t even go to the physicians you want to go to. You have to go to physicians who’ve registered with the NJCUMMA.
Until recently, the law was interpreted as saying state-approved marijuana sellers could only sell three strains of marijuana, and they can’t sell marijuana with more than 10% THC. What’s up with a medical marijuana law that mandates schwag?
As of this article’s publication, New Jersey has only one state-approved marijuana seller, but that seller is, I hate to say it, a flake who opened his medical marijuana dispensary last December, could not provide quality meds, closed, and now has re-opened for who knows how long.
It’s the same in other eastern states: the medical marijuana laws are a farce.
Hey Governor Christie: Obesity Kills, Pot Doesn’t
So here we are nearly four years after the New Jersey medical marijuana law passed, and sick and dying people still can’t grow their own marijuana or purchase it. Sick and dying people are still going to jail for marijuana.
New Jersey’s oversized Republican governor, Chris Christie, makes speeches reported in the mainstream media as proof he is “opposed to the drug war.” But he’s not. It’s all political theater.
Christie is promoted in the mainstream media as Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the 2016 presidential race. The major media frame 2016 as Hillary versus Christie. I’m no fan of either of them. They’re two sides of the same ugly pro-war, anti-marijuana coin.
I vote Green or Libertarian. And Christie’s fatuous actions regarding medical marijuana disqualify him from ever getting my vote.
In fact, Chris Christie was a federal prosecuting attorney before he was governor, was politically allied with George “Weapons of mass destruction” Bush, and has been repeatedly accused of corruption, violation of civil liberties, and ensuring questionable if not illegal kickbacks to his friends and causes.
He has pushed through billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, schools, environmental protection, and other spending, while at the same time New Jersey police, prosecutors, and courts spend several hundred million dollars a year punishing marijuana users and growers.
He recently told an interviewer that if he gets elected president, he’ll send in the DEA to smash up state marijuana legalization systems and end what voters and legislators have achieved in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and elsewhere.
New Jersey is a Very Long Way From Marijuana-Legalized Colorado
Like most right-wing GOP governors, Christie has cut funding for programs that help people and the environment while at the same time New Jersey spending on marijuana law enforcement has increased so violent crimes and property crimes go unstopped as a result.
After a desperate family confronted Christie asking why their dying 2-year-old severely epileptic daughter can’t legally use medical marijuana, Christie made headlines stating he was compassionate and would make changes to allow children to use medical marijuana. But the changes he proposed actually made it harder for the parents.
Christie is ok with kids taking dangerous and even deadly prescription drugs. When parents and doctors want a child to consume medical marijuana, Christie steps in and makes it harder.
The guy is so stupid as to claim that if medical marijuana was authorized for children, parents might smoke their kid’s meds.
Christie’s well-connected elite friends are insiders who stand to benefit from highly-valued, state-approved licenses and other sweetheart monopoly deals regarding medical marijuana growing and selling because Christie’s GOP ideology wants to make it so a few corporations profit from providing marijuana. That’s why he opposes letting us grow marijuana for ourselves.
We find it comicallly ironic when Christie says his opposition to Colorado-style marijuana legalization is because marijuana harms your health, it’s bad for children, and criminals might be involved in the marijuana industry.
Really, governor? You’re a 350-pound corrupt “conservative” who preaches budget-cutting “small government” while making sure the government spends our money trying to stop us from using and growing medical marijuana.
Before this guy became governor, he was a paid lobbyist fronting for energy companies that ruin our environment, banksters who rip us off via securities fraud, and other nefarious corporations. In that context, his concern that medical marijuana might harm us rings hollow.
Governor Christie opposes legislation that would lighten penalties for possession of marijuana. He famously said “the drug war is a failure,” but his “alternative” is to stop locking marijuana people away in prisons, and instead lock them away in drug treatment centers.
I envy you marijuana growers in Colorado, California, Washington, and Oregon. I know your state marijuana laws aren’t perfect, but you have it real good compared to what Governor Christie and other New Jersey politicians have done to us.
Other than people living in Maine (that state’s medical marijuana law is at least halfway what it should be), many of us here in this backwards part of the country view our medical marijuana laws as traps.
What’s funny is, New Jersey calls itself “The Garden State.” No surprise that our waddling Governor Chris Christie wants to make sure it’s not a medical marijuana garden state. The New Jersey medical marijuana law, and GOP Governor Chris Christie, are big, fat jokes.
