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Gov. Phil Murphy has withdrawn a planned announcement to forge ahead with a massive expansion of the New Jersey’s medicinal marijuana program, one day after a failed attempt to pass a bill to legalize recreational pot in the state, sources told NJ Advance Media.

Hours after top state lawmakers called off the legal weed measure Monday, Murphy told a town hall audience he was prepared to announce Tuesday or Wednesday that state would seek applications for dozens of new growers, cultivators and retailers for the medicinal program that currently relies on six operators serving 42,000 patients.

He said such a move could boost enrollment to as many as 200,000 patients.

“We’ll likely aggressively further open up the medical regime in the next day or two,” the Democratic governor said during the event at a Union City elementary school, adding the number of people enrolled in the program “probably should be at 150,000 or 200,000.”

But after Democratic leaders in the state Senate and Assembly pledged to reach a compromise on the adult-use recreation bill, hopefully by sometime in May, the Murphy administration Tuesday afternoon agreed to hold off on the medical program’s expansion, according to four sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Lawmakers expressed worry that Murphy’s plan to expand the medical marijuana program would hurt their ability to gather votes for legal weed, according to two legislative sources.

They said the concern is that there would be less incentive for lawmakers to back legal weed without connecting it to expanding medical marijuana and that it would cause votes to be peeled away.

One of the sources familiar with the discussions said if there was still not enough support for legalization by the end of May, Murphy would consider expanding the program.

The bill expanding the medicinal marijuana program includes home delivery services, a reduction in the frequency of patient visits to their doctor’s offices to renew their enrollment, and permission to buy as much as three ounces a month, up from two ounces of cannabis.

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

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01.