A bill passed by the New Jersey Legislature this week that legalizes medical marijuana for medicinal purposes is far more restrictive than similar laws passed in other states like California and Montana. From the Wall Street Journal:
Marijuana is now legal for some patients in more than a dozen states. But, at least based on the Jersey bill, the rules seem to be getting stricter as legalization spreads.
Medical marijuana will be limited to certain patients — people whose prognosis gives them less than a year to live, or those with specific symptoms resulting from certain diseases, such as AIDS, cancer and Crohn’s. (The bill also allows the state health department to add other diseases to the list.)
New Jersey’s Republican Gov.-elect Chris Christie has offered only lukewarm support for the bill, which passed by wide margins in that state’s Assembly and Senate, and he called California’s version of the law “completely out of control.”
I wonder what Christie would think of Montana’s law, which simply states that a patient must be diagnosed with a “debilitating medical condition” to consume cannabis legally.
Nonetheless, New Jersey should now be added to the map below, which shows states with medical marijuana laws (lime green), decriminalized marijuana laws (muddy green) and both (dark green).
