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Days after he shelved plans to expand medical marijuana to cover up to 200,000 patients in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday he’ll give the state Legislature until May to pass a bill legalizing recreational weed in the state or else he’ll turn his focus to medicinal pot.

“We’re not gonna wait around a lot,” Murphy said at an unrelated news conference in Saddle Brook.

The comment came on the heels of a confusing week for those anxious to see the medical marijuana program expand beyond the roughly 42,000 patients already enrolled.

First, Murphy said increasing the number of people using medical marijuana would be his top priority after a recreational weed bill failed to get enough support for a planned vote Monday in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Legislative leaders have packaged the legal and medical pot bills together to garner more support for the former.

“We’ll likely aggressively further open up the medical regime in the next day or two,” the Democratic governor said at a town hall meeting Monday, just hours after the legal weed vote was called off.

He added the number of people enrolled in the program “probably should be at 150,000 or 200,000.”

Less than a day later, Murphy changed his tune and said he’d hold off on those plans in an effort to appease leaders in the state Senate who have insisted the separate recreational weed bill and medical expansion bill should be voted on together in order to corral more support for legalization.

That move angered medical marijuana supporters, including Mike Honig, whose 7-year-old son, Jake Honig, used cannabis oil to control excruciating pain before he died from cancer last year.

“We are putting patients in New Jersey behind pleasure-seekers,” Mike Honig said in video he posted online. “We are putting our own personal agenda ahead of the terminally ill child.”

Murphy said the Honig family reached out to him personally this week.

“We’re holding back enormous demand for the medical regime and Jack’s parents are right,” the governor said. “I’m prepared to hold off for a short amount of time and I would say that the month of May would be the edge of that.”

State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, and state Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, are adamant that until they’ve secured enough votes to pass a bill legalizing marijuana for adults 21 and older, they will not post the medical expansion bill for vote.

They’ve publicly acknowledged they are “tie-barring,” or linking, the two bills, hoping support for improving the restrictive medicinal program will bring some yes votes for the recreational weed.

The "Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Cannabis Act” would allow terminal and hospice patients unlimited amount of cannabis. Other patients would be able to buy 2.5 ounces a month for the first six months after the law takes effect and rise to 3 ounces six months later, according to the bill (S10).

If the delays in passing both bills continue, said state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, one of the prime sponsors of the medicinal legislation, said he could envision portion of his bill could move separately.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook

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