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The Seton Hall University Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law & Policy published a Position Paper in August 2009 in support of the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana law. The Center said that the legislation has been carefully drafted to allow New Jersey residents with debilitating medical conditions access to marijuana to ease their suffering without creating an undue risk of abuse or diversion. The Center cited available medical evidence that supports the use of marijuana to treat each of the debilitating medical conditions set forth in the new law. The Center also addressed the issues of abuse and diversion. The Center noted that no state that has passed a medical marijuana law has subsequently experienced an increase in recreational marijuana use among its children and youth. The NJ law’s multiple safeguards against abuse and diversion of medical marijuana provide further reassurance that teen marijuana use will not increase as a result of patient access to medical marijuana under prescriber supervision. NJ’s law is the most restrictive of all the states’ medical marijuana laws. (Currently, thirteen states, covering about 25% of the U.S. population, have working medical marijuana programs.) I invite Ms. Angelini to read the entire Seton Hall position paper at: http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/08/26/position-paper-in-support-of-the-new-jersey-compassionate-use-medical-marijuana-act/ This, after all, only confirms the common sense view that teens do not find it glamorous when they see cancer patients and AIDS patients using marijuana. Use of marijuana by seriously ill patients deglamorizes it for teens. Indeed, teens have all the access to marijuana that they want already, without medical marijuana being legal in New Jersey. Government surveys have shown that for the past 30 years in a row, over 80% of NJ high school seniors have said that marijuana is “easy to get” or “fairly easy to get.” It’s hard to imagine that getting any worse. It is only the legitimate patients who find access to marijuana difficult. I also question why Ms. Angelini, who is so outspoken against medical mariujuana, never bothered to vote against the bill when it passed in the Assembly on January 11, 2010. See: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bills/BillView.asp I’m sure she’s not a negligent legislator. Perhaps any vote on the issue would represent a “conflict of interest” with her work in substance abuse prevention. After all, substance abuse treatment programs potentially benefit by having medical marijuana illegal. Patients who are arrested for using marijuana may be given a choice of going to jail or going to a substance abuse treatment program. Which would you choose? From this perspective, Ms. Angelini’s column itself gives the appearance of a conflict of interest.