In New Jersey, when your doctor prescribes painkillers for migraines, the state doesn’t charge sales tax. When you buy over-the-counter cough medicine, that’s not taxed, either. But if you have cancer and a doctor recommends pot to ease your pain, you’ll pay the same 7 percent sales tax you’ll pay for magazines, mouthwash and marshmallows.

Sales taxes will apply to medical marijuana, the state announced this week, because that's what lawmakers agreed to. Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), who sponsored the medical marijuana bill — signed nearly three years ago by then-Gov. Jon Corzine — said lawmakers never even debated an exemption for marijuana.

They should have. Legalizing pot for people in chronic pain was a humanitarian move, and the fact that this program is finally getting under way is good news. But it should never have taken this long. The bureaucratic foot-dragging by the Christie administration forced patients to wait years for relief. And the sales tax adds one final insult.

Yes, many states with medical marijuana laws do the same thing, but that doesn’t make it right. This puts medical marijuana in a cash-cow category, similar to booze and cigarettes.

In those cases, we call it a "sin tax." But what exactly is the sin committed by patients in pain? Why do they deserve tougher treatment than people with acid indigestion?

Need the cash? Decriminalize marijuana, including recreational smoking. Then regulate it and tax the bejeepers out of it.

But it is just not right to tax a sick person’s medicine.