Medical marijuana

Yesterday New Jersey became the fourteenth state to legalize so-called "medical marijuana." Under the new law, doctors will be able to prescribe marijuana for patients suffering from conditions like cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis. Marijuana's analgesic and antiemetic properties are well known throughout the medical community, and evidently it can help slow the progression of neuralgia as well.

Much of the negativity connoted with medical marijuana use stems from California's experience with the practice. Unfortunately, that experiment backfired when the list of conditions for which marijuana can be prescribed ballooned to include such common ailments as anxiety and chronic pain, which made marijuana more or less accessible to the entire population. New Jersey lawmakers appear to have been paying attention to California's mistake, however. They set a specific, limited list of conditions for which patients may be prescribed marijuana, as well as a relatively low maximum monthly dose they may receive.

There are still some opponents of this new law who maintain that will increase the pressure teenagers feel to begin experimenting with drugs, but this is a fairly uncompelling argument. As far as pain relievers go, marijuana is not nearly as potent as some of the opioids currently in circulation. There is no reason to think that people will begin preying on the infirm to steal their marijuana. Anyone inclined to do this would probably be too busy trying to rob other patients of their morphine to pay any attention to the cancer patient with a marijuana prescription. The potential for fraud is also considerably lower under this law than in other states, due to the extremely restrictive list of qualifying conditions. No one is going to contract AIDS or Lou Gehrig's disease just to score two ounces of marijuana a month, and patients are not allowed to grow the marijuana themselves, either.

All in all, New Jersey seems to have put a lot of thought into making sure that medical marijuana finds its way only into the hands of the people who need it. Hopefully this new law will play out as well as it looks like it should, and if so, perhaps this will be a model for other states to follow.