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Shawnea Estrella of Franklin with her daughter Sara are seen in this file photo from July outside the Statehouse during a protest of the state's medical marijuana law. Protestors believe the governor has over-regulated the program. Sara Estrella suffers from seizures.

(John O'Boyle/Star-Ledger)

The issue of edible marijuana in New Jersey comes down to an irrefutable premise: The governor of this state has had numerous chances to liberate children from suffering over the last 18 months, yet he has chosen not to do it.

Chris Christie seems content to live with this disgrace. At one time, he summoned the audacity by looking into the faces of inconsolable parents and chirping the dim-bulb refrain, "It's complicated," and now he merely dismisses a law that he signed himself and hopes that nobody notices.

But he promised to bring comfort to the afflicted - especially the little ones, who cannot find relief by smoking — and the only plausible explanation for the foot-dragging is that hardly any red states show up on the medical marijuana map.

The damage is heartbreaking: Two full years after Vivian Wilson's parents took their adorable toddler and outsourced all their hopes for a normal life to Colorado, there is still no edible marijuana program for children who suffer needlessly, because Christie's administration doesn't prioritize compassion.

New Jersey is one of 23 (almost entirely blue) states that permit medical marijuana, but its governor has imposed the most stringent restrictions for qualifying minors. State-run dispensaries were given permission to sell edibles for kids in September 2013, yet not a single one has been distributed. And as we learned from Susan Livio's story last week, the top expert from three dispensaries has been "stonewalled" since he asked the state to green-light his manufacturing guidelines nearly a year ago.

In the interim, the governor has even refused to allow parents to bring edibles in from other states to reduce their children's suffering. And then, with callous arrogance, he accused the legislature of using sick children as an excuse to legalize recreational marijuana use.

Since then, the dedicated people at the Department of Health have maintained that it's held up because the extraction process is too dangerous to rush, and that developing safety standards takes time.

But this is not a complicated issue — unless the guy in charge chooses to make it so.

Once manufacturing is authorized, it's not hard to regulate marijuana in lozenge or liquid form for children in three easy steps. One: It must be marketed for medicinal purposes, so kids aren't seduced by another Joe Camel campaign. Two: It must have its THC dosage clearly marked, along with explicit warnings about use, overuse and legality. Three: It must be placed inside child-resistant packaging.

Voila, problem solved.

Yet on Christie's watch, the pain persists.

The infant with epilepsy, suffering dozens of seizures a day. The preteen with autism who gets no relief from psychotropics. The child with leukemia.

They live around the state and around the corner, and each one is our poster child - not for recreational marijuana as some claim, but for the abject failure of government. Because in this administration, pain is a tolerable side-effect in the partisan laboratory where they spend most of the time weighing political implications.

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