With New Jersey’s endorsement of medical marijuana, there may be no stopping the rehabilitation of cannabis from illegal drug to legitimate therapy.
Late yesterday, Gov. Corzine signed a law making New Jersey the fourteenth state to legalize medical pot. Four more states and the District of Columbia are expected to follow suit by year’s end.
Many things are driving this sea change. The federal government last year announced that it would no longer prosecute medical marijuana smokers in states where it is legal, while the National Institutes of Health has begun funding research on medicinal use in a reversal of a long-standing policy.
Gallup Polls show a solid majority of Americans sympathetic to therapeutic marijuana use.
And the usually conservative American Medical Association, along with the Philadelphia-based American College of Physicians, has joined other medical groups in calling for research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.
Lawyer Keith Stroup, who founded the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in 1970, rejoiced: ‘We’ve had more political progress and public support in the past three years than in the previous 30. We’ve largely won the hearts and minds of Americans.’
Paul Cohen, a physician and lawyer who teaches public health law at Georgetown University, said, ‘I think we’re pretty close to the tipping point.’
California’s famously liberal medical marijuana law allows the use, possession, and cultivation of marijuana by anyone who possess a ‘written or oral recommendation’ from their physician that he or she ‘would benefit from medical marijuana.’
