Suzette Roberts of Cliffside Park should feel no guilt whatsoever about breaking the law and buying her marijuana on the street.

Friends and family who might have ready access to the black market should help her out, because the state has made it clear that it won't.

The 64-year-old suffers from stage 4 breast cancer and needs medicinal pot to ease her pain and replenish her appetite. So far, she’s paid $500 in doctor bills and $200 for an I.D. card for the state’s program, and has absolutely nothing to show for it.

Roberts is one of many seriously ill people stuck on the waiting list for the only licensed medical marijuana dispensary, The Star-Ledger’s Susan K. Livio reported Sunday. New Jersey’s program is still a mess, providing only false hopes and extra expenses to desperate people already struggling to afford their own treatment.

Thanks to widespread misinformation, patients were forced to pay for multiple doctor visits, even though it’s not actually required for the program. You can get a referring doctor to take over primary responsibility for treating the condition for which you need the marijuana, which requires one visit.

Then there are other senseless fees. If you had a bed-ridden partner who needed OxyContin, you could go to the pharmacy and fill the prescription for him. But if his painkiller is marijuana, a patient must pay an additional $200 so a loved one can be issued a separate I.D. card to pick it up, adding up to $400 for registration alone.

The cost of the marijuana is also way too high. And for gravely ill patients, the delay is at least as big a problem.

There are ways Gov. Chris Christie could help, if he so chose. First of all, our state needs another round of licensing, to ease the bottleneck of patients and add real competition to lower prices for medical marijuana. So far, only six dispensaries have gotten state approval, and just one has opened. Imagine if we had only six pharmacies in New Jersey. How well would that work?

We should also be issuing these new licenses to for-profit businesses. This financial structure would serve patients better because it would attract investors. The original six dispensaries, modeled as nonprofits, could open for-profit satellites, so as not to be disadvantaged by having gone in first.

There’s skepticism surrounding for-profits, but New Jersey is not California. We have strict oversight of our program. New Jersey would still require background checks and closely regulate its dispensaries. The only difference would be their added ability to raise money. Think about it: Our pharmaceutical industry is for-profit. If it weren’t, who would invest in developing new drugs?

And let's not forget that a bill to help sick kids access medical marijuana is still sitting idle on Christie's desk. The very least he could do is sign that. The Legislature should also hold hearings on our medical marijuana law and loosen some of its arbitrary restrictions — the absolute limits on a chemical in marijuana called THC, on the allowable strains, and the ban on home growing, even if it's limited to only six plants.

Christie has often spoken of the strangling effect of state regulations on business. So why not fix this? Sick people are suffering, they’ve paid their dues, and the state hasn’t held up its end of the bargain.

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