Irvina Booker makes a most unlikely criminal. She lives in constant pain, disabled by multiple sclerosis and arthritis, a grandmother whose limited mobility depends on her walker, her daughter and marijuana.

“I never smoked it before I got sick, and I don’t smoke it for fun,” said Ms. Booker, 59, who lives in Englewood, N.J. She would not divulge how she obtains her marijuana, but said, “I don’t want to be sneaking around, afraid someone is going to get arrested getting it for me.”

Like many people who contend that marijuana eases pain and appetite loss from serious diseases, Ms. Booker cheered in January 2010, when New Jersey legalized its use in cases like hers. But a year and a half later, there is still no state-sanctioned marijuana available for patients, and none being grown, and there is no sign of when there might be.

But for the first time, he said, “the possibility of just scrapping the program” came up, though only in passing. Aides to the governor denied that there was any discussion of abandoning the program.

The state has named six nonprofit organizations to grow and dispense marijuana. The would-be growers say that if they were given the go-ahead, it would take at least four months to get up and running.

“A lot of people ask when, how, if we’re really going to open, and we can’t tell them anything,” said Ida Umanskaya, a director of Greenleaf Compassion Center, which plans to operate in Montclair.

Another operator, Compassionate Care Centers of America Foundation, which would be based in New Brunswick, “remains cautiously hopeful,” said Raj Mukherji, a spokesman for the group.