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Program assumes Rutgers will by the lone supplier
New Jersey's teaching hospitals are campaigning to be the sole dispensers of medical marijuana in the state by touting their secure buildings, connection to patients, and legitimacy in the community, according to a proposal obtained by The Star-Ledger.
The New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals' pitch is the leading proposal Governor Christie's administration is considering as it decides upon implementing the controversial law within the next six months, said state Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), one of the law's sponsors.
"The program not only will make New Jersey the model for the nation in how to implement a safe and sane marijuana program, it could bring significant new dollars to the teaching hospitals to fund graduate medical education therein addressing New Jersey's physician manpower shortage, "according to the council's proposal.
The plan assumes Rutgers University's School of Environmental and Biological Sciences would be the lone farmer supplying the marijuana to the 16 largest of the 40 teaching hospitals.
The patients registered by the hospital would place orders online and pick them up at the in-house pharmacy. The product itself would be sold in prescription pill bottles, with strains like "White Widow" and "AK-47" renamed," the proposal said.
J. Richard Goldstein, the council's executive director, said the proposal would benefit chronically ill patients.
The teaching hospitals also stand to gain "a significant funding source" to invest in training new doctors, Goldstein said.
"All proceeds would be dedicated to improving the physician supply or for research" demonstrating how the cannabis plant best reduces pain, muscle spasms, nausea and other debilitating symptoms, the report said.
The council released a report earlier this year saying New Jersey is facing a shortage of nearly 3,000 family doctors and specialists in the next decade because the state has gained a reputation of being a "hostile" place to run a practice.
Scutari said he likes the concept but he feels uncomfortable with the monopoly the state would be giving Rutgers and the hospitals.
"I don't like it being a monopoly forever," Scutari said in a report in NorthJersey.com.
Goldstein said he would agree to ending the monopoly, but he hopes the legislators allow perhaps five years for hospitals to recoup some of the money invested in the operation, creating the website or technology purchases.
— BOB HOLT, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
"When I can go into the store and buy a pint of Cirrhosis or 2 packs of Lung cancer, I should be able to go buy a perfectly safe plant or even produce my own."
THis is going to end badly. Feds will cut funding to the hospitals because of the Federal law on marijuana, and doctors and nurses will start getting arrested. This is a bad scenario, but in the end it will work in our favor by forcing the federal government to comply and ultimately reclassify marijuana to allow for prescriptions written by a doctor.
When the next chance to vote the dummies out of office comes, do so.